10 things you need to know to buy a blade server

Http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13737.html "> Blade servers are more space-saving than rack-mounted servers, and the heat dissipation problem is more pronounced, often with large powerful fans in the chassis to dissipate heat. Although this type of server space is more economical, but its cabinet and blade prices are not low, generally applied to large data centers or areas requiring large-scale computing, such as banking and telecommunications financial industry and Internet data centers.

At present, save space, easy to centralize management, easy to expand and provide uninterrupted service, become the new requirements for next-generation server, and blade server just can meet this demand, so blade server market demand is expanding, has a good market prospects.

As an IT manager, users may encounter many vendors who advertise their solutions for better, more cost-effective, more efficient, and more. Many new products and technologies will use marketing strategies after they are launched, but what happens if we throw away a lot of marketing hype and implement the facts? At present, what can the blade server do for the user? After we get rid of those exaggerated propaganda, does the manufacturer's propaganda around the blades still hold up? Let's take a look at 10 things users need to know before buying a blade server.

1. Blade Server uses less power

This propaganda may be true. In fact, blade servers are 28% more power-saving than traditional servers. The power supply in the blade chassis is distributed throughout the chassis, so a more energy-saving configuration is a chassis full of blade servers. Each blade server allocates a power supply that is specified by the manufacturer, and some vendors specify performance that is better than those specified by other vendors. However, the overall power consumption of the blade server is significantly lower than the traditional blade server. There are also software that can allocate more or less power to specific blades depending on the needs of a single blade server.

2. Virtualization

After having the total cost, virtualization has received more media attention. Virtualization uses a very powerful server to drive more servers. Each virtual server runs as if it has its own memory, hard disk space, processors, and other resources. Virtualization and blade servers are tailored to the needs of the data center, since both are modular in nature. This modular nature allows the workload to be isolated or dispersed between server clusters. Current virtualization products Create virtualized server pools that spread consolidated service workloads across multiple blades. Consolidating servers through virtualization maximizes modern availability and lowers costs.

3. Manufacturers tying large purchases

If the user chooses to use the blade server in the data center, the user must decide to select a vendor or choose another specific vendor based on some factors. Because the blade server chassis of manufacturer A may not be compatible with manufacturer B or other manufacturer's blade server. If the user chooses IBM's blade server, he will choose IBM's overall solution. This is true of Sun, HP or Dell. Once a user buys a blade server solution for a specific vendor, it has to be connected to that vendor.

4. Less space and higher density

This propaganda may be true. This is the main reason why some enterprises with shared ground space choose to switch to the blade server. Blade server Computing, also known as high-density computing, can be placed in the same rack space by 2 to 4 times times more blades than a traditional server. Most blade server enclosures occupy 7U of vertical rack space, but with advanced design, space can be used more efficiently. The products offered by vendors are very different, but if users can put 10 to 14 servers in a blade chassis, this is obviously a lot more space than deploying 14 standard rack servers.

5. Blade server requires less cooling

This is not true in the early blade servers, which were 5 of years ago. The air flow in the early blade server and chassis is not good enough. However, blade servers and chassis are now designed much better than they were a few years ago.

The processor, memory, and power supply are the most heat-generating components in the computer. Compared to the early blades, the current blade server standard not only consumes less power but also reduces heat loss by 10% to 25%. The power supply is not the only project that is currently redesigned, and some vendors are using solid-state drives, and solid-state drives are virtually free of heat compared to traditional hard drives because they do not have rotating components. To reduce the cooling capacity of the blade server, the manufacturer not only uses the mobile processor to save power, but also reduces the heat dissipation. For those who do not use solid-state drives, these manufacturers opt for a 2.5-inch hard drive with a smaller power consumption and less heat dissipation than the standard 3.5-inch hard drive.

Most blade servers use a 2.5-inch hard drive with a higher failure rate than the 3.5-inch SATA hard disk used in a non-blade server. However, this situation will change over time.