Blade server products must kill technology remote monitoring

As Blade server sales continue to grow and blade server deployments continue to expand, under the pressure of increasing budget pressure and continuous improvement of IT service requirements, the management cost of controlling blade server becomes the most urgent task of most IT organizations, while the function of remote monitoring and management is the most essential way to solve this problem.





's two-part information from IDC has forced us to confront the management of the blade server.





on the one hand, IDC estimates that from 1996 to 2008, the number of servers to be managed worldwide will increase from 5 million to nearly 35 million units. The investment in the new server hardware is expected to reach between 50 million dollars and 70 million dollars. In terms of maintenance, IDC estimates that businesses and government spending on infrastructure maintenance in 2004 amounted to $95 billion trillion, and that by 2008, that investment would grow by 10% per cent a year.





on the other hand, IDC predicts that, until 2008, blade servers will be the main driver of the growth of the x86 server market. By then, the blade server will be shipped more than tower and rack-type server, become the main x86 server market.




A key difference between a
blade server and a traditional server is its small size--because the blade has space-saving features, enterprise users can place more blades in a smaller space. Improving management of Blades is one of the industry's efforts, with the primary goal of providing better flexibility, lower complexity, and lower it costs for customers.





Currently, Blade server mainstream vendors have launched their own management tools, such as HP System Insight Manager, IBM Director, Sun N1 Grid Provisioning Server Blades, Dell OpenManage. Looking at these management software, we are not difficult to see, Blade Server Management of several mainstream development trends.





soft and hard combination to realize remote monitoring





The remote monitoring function is a basic function of Blade server management, which is determined by the Blade Server application environment. With these remote monitoring tools, you can address many of the concerns of users, such as customers with distributed or remote offices, who can address the limited IT skills of local people, and complex and expensive it devices that can track, manage, and support remote locations To avoid having a serious cost impact due to server downtime running critical business applications, upgrading network system software, and quickly completing software distribution and system deployment.





in order to realize the intelligent monitoring of Blade server, many enterprises adopt the method of combining intelligent infrastructure with advanced management software, which can greatly improve the computing performance and solve many inefficient problems which lead to soaring operation cost.





IBM provides IBM Director management software for its eserver bladecenter Blade server free of charge. The latest version of IBM Director is 5.1. IBM Director client software can run as an agent on a blade server that can return management information to a quick access module on the blade chassis. IBM matched hardware and software by adding Lightpath diagnostics to the blade server and chassis. The IBM Director,it administrator can observe and track hardware configuration details for remote systems and monitor the usage and performance of critical components, including processors, hard disks, memory, and so on.





Deployment Simple





Remote deployment Management is another core feature of many blade server management. For the first phase of server deployment in the system lifecycle, remote deployment management is an effective tool, it can send a complete software image to the remote system installation, the system administrator from the day-to-day repetitive, cyclical heavy labor freed, save travel and human costs, improve efficiency.





the IBM BladeCenter Blade Server can use RDM (Remote deployment Manager) to configure and deploy blades in a separate bladecenter that enables customers to access an IBM Director the console to deploy system mirroring to one or more blades, including operating system and configuration details.





HP's blade server is shipped with the Server Quick deployment package--proliant Essentials Rapid deployment Pack (RDP). RDP graphical management tools not only help users simplify the installation and deployment process of a large number of servers, but also have automated recovery mechanisms that enable system administrators to manage a large number of blade servers. For example, a user can use a laptop or any resource on the network to distribute software to any blade server in the computer room, including operating systems, applications, and so on, and can support simultaneous distribution of multiple servers.





Dell OpenManage System Management solutions provide Dell Server Assistant for deployment, automate 1:1 server installations, server Assistant compatible with all Dell supported operating systems, A Single-server installation can be completed in about 30 minutes. In addition, the deployment of multiple PowerEdge servers can be accomplished quickly through multiple deployment kits.




One of the management features of the
HP Blade server is the ILO2 remote management card on each blade server. ILO2 is not related to the operating system, so long as the server is charged, it can be maintained and repaired remotely. For system administrators, it is possible to secure access and management at any point in any terminal, even virtual power switches, virtual graphics remote consoles, and virtual storage media. In addition, graphical management tools can help users implement system board level management, security settings, and so on, including monitoring server components, event logs, and administrative agents. At the same time, HP provides the SIM (System Insight Manager) management tool for the blade Server for remote administration. A modular architecture based SIM enables server deployment, performance monitoring, and workload control from a single console. Its proactive monitoring and fault management can alert system administrators before potential or actual errors occur.





Dell OpenManage also has remote monitoring capabilities. In the area of remote administration, Dell is managed at two levels, the first of which is the IPMI Base Board management controller, which is built into the server, which enables basic management functions that users can use to manage non-critical tasks that are less costly. The other is the DRAC4 remote access controller, which is a management card plugged into a server that users can use to accomplish some critical tasks.