The five mistaken interpretations of Blade server _ server Other

misunderstanding one: the chassis, the plate will become "short board"

Now the blame for cooling and powering the blades has been reduced, replacing the chassis and the plate as a new target. At a CIO seminar held at the beginning of this year, some users noted that chassis, midplane (or backplane) will become the Blade service "short board", because all the service Blade (Blade) and switch all connected/inserted in the plate, the plate once damaged, the consequences of unimaginable, and the chassis also has a similar problem. This concern, in fact, stems largely from subjective inference.

First of all, the chassis is a shell, its own damage probability is very small, there is nothing to worry about. Really need to care about is the blade service of the plate. IBM and HP are different in the design of redundancy in the middle board. As shown here, this is the IBM BladeCenter Blade Service in the middle board, from the figure can be seen: in the upper and lower sides of the vent with 14 signals and power connectors, IBM BladeCenter Blade service is full with the 7u14 slice (7U height, 14 blades).

HP BladeSystem Blade Service in the middle plate does not adopt this up and down redundancy design, according to Hewlett-Packard engineers, HP's plate and service blade connectors and other connectors do not have any electrical indicators, the connection between them is a pure plug in the connector between the electrical connection is through the controller to achieve, They are doubly redundant and can be replaced online. HP engineers pointed out that the bladesystem of course may also be damaged, but as a pure connectors, its probability is very low, this is after the laboratory fully certified conclusion, its life can reach hundreds of thousands of times. He pointed out that if the use of upper and lower redundancy design, once the side of the damage, or not to replace, so lose redundant protection, reliability has been reduced. If the replacement, only downtime, for users this is a dilemma choice.

misunderstanding two: The standard flaw causes to be bound by the manufacturer

The issue of standardization has long been a hot topic. Several major blade service manufacturers, their specifications and standards are different, such as IBM provided BladeCenter S, E, H, T, HT and other 5 chassis, including the mainstream product is BladeCenter E, its configuration 7u14 tablets; H is a 9u14 slice, while H, HT is a chassis for telecommunications and high-performance design. HP Baldesystem C-class Series Blade Service device is divided into C3000 and C7000, which C3000 for small and medium-sized enterprises design, specifications 7U8 film; C7000 is a 10u16 piece. HP C-Series blades have a full height and a half height difference, there is a distinction between AMD and Intel blades, for dual service products, with dual-core and four-core distinction. Full-efficiency workers occupy up and down 2 slots, more than Itanium or multi-channel service, so far, can support 4-way dual-core or 4-way 4-core Xeon processor blade. In addition, HP also offers blade storage and tape drives.

Different specifications and systems, so that different manufacturers of the service blade can not be mixed plug. From the perspective of the market as a whole, the lack of standards, not conducive to the formation of large-scale consumption, will affect the cost of blade service consumption. However, for users, this does not directly affect the application of blade service, no matter what kind of blade service users can achieve rapid deployment, green energy saving and easy to govern.

Related user investment in the future can not be protected, such as users only buy a small number of blade service, when the user business to a certain scale, perhaps 2-3 years later, users will not find the chassis compatible with the service blade, causing waste. In fact, this is also a trumped-up "guilt". For the size of the user, you can choose BladeCenter s or Baldesystem C3000, or simply the use of domestic blade service, these blades in the design, fully considered the size of small and medium-sized enterprises and dosage. Taking Baldesystem C3000 as an example, the design is 7u8 film. 8 blades are not a large amount of for small and medium-sized enterprises, from the mail, file sharing, WEB, human resources, financial applications need more than one server, in addition, some key applications, such as database applications need to use the full height of the server, combined with storage, tape drives and so on, so do not need to worry about the size of the problem

Myth Three: Virtual connection is equivalent to virtualization

A virtual connection to the blade service, HP is called Virtual CONNECT,IBM to achieve similar functionality through the BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager software. The so-called virtual connection refers to when a blade of a service device. For example, if a fails, replace it with a redundant d blade in the idle state. With the support of virtual connection, D can directly replace a, any related network, storage parameter configuration without reconfiguration, service blade can do "Plug and Play", Service blade and network, storage between the governance becomes simple and transparent , this is the virtual connection.

The industry often confuse the virtual connection of the blade service with virtualization. It should be noted that the blade service does not unconditionally support virtual connections under any conditions. Only the use of HP's Network module (Blade service switch), Blade Service can support virtual connection. If the user chooses a Cisco, Brocade or Foundry network module, then the blade service does not support virtual connections, unless the modules also add the appropriate functionality.

misunderstanding four: Blade changes user network structure

Because each service blade in the chassis is connected through a network module (switch), these network modules are also selectively available. But is it more difficult to add a network module (switch) layer between the service blade and the LAN switch than the rack service, which adds to the difficulty of system governance? In addition, the Blade Service Network module will become a new bottleneck.

Relevant technical engineers pointed out that in most cases, Blade service Network module will not become a bottleneck, because it has a lot of choices, can support Gigabit Ethernet, can also support 10G, FC, InfiniBand, etc., its network module also has 2/3-layer switch function. In addition, for the extraordinary application, can also implement the blade service through the transmission. For example, the HP C Series provides an Ethernet pass-through module (pass through) that provides a straight-through LAN connection to the blade service. A one-to-one network adapter for wiring racks that provides non-blocking connectivity.

Blade Service This flexible networking capabilities, to provide users with more choices. In addition, the related extension of the problem, such as the use of multiple network card connection, can also be extended through the corresponding modules to meet the needs of applications.

mistake five: Blade service heat dissipation problem in general

In the design of blade service, heat dissipation is a key concern, but do not mistakenly think: Blade service will produce more heat, need to consume more air conditioning refrigeration. On the contrary, compared to the same number of 1U rack service, the blade service requires more refrigeration than not to add, but reduced by 25%.

This conclusion is not difficult to understand. In the interview, the relevant product manager pointed out that, from the component, the blade service is not extraordinary, it uses the processor, hard disk and memory, and the rack service is not different, there is no so-called in order to alleviate the heat pressure, and the use of notebook computer hard disk problem. In fact, blades in the blade service are completely equivalent to the rack type service.

The difference between the blade service and the rack-type service is shared power, fan, and chassis. In the power supply, the number of fans, blade service has been reduced, so more energy-saving, the resulting heat also decreased. Although at present different manufacturers adopt different heat dissipation schemes, they can meet the need of cooling of blade service. In addition, compared with the rack type service, because the blade service has a relatively confined space, the heat dissipation efficiency is higher.