Data center positioning in Blade server application

Michael May is Indiana Midwest Independent transmission System http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/10963.html "> Assistant Director of the Operator (ISO) data center, who has witnessed the center's ongoing process of adding more servers to meet business needs. Referring to the blade server, May said: "The newly installed blade server makes him very worried." With the current power and cooling capabilities of the datacenter, he was concerned about whether they could continue to support business needs. ”

Closer to May's point of view, domestic Internet Data Center users also believe that the blade server to the room's existing power supply system challenges, they pointed out that the conditions of a better Internet Data center, each of its racks rated current of only 16A, and the conditions of some only 6.8 A, In such a condition, if the blade server is deployed, the existing power lines must be modified. Not only that, because the blade server in a small enough space, crammed into as much memory and CPU, so how to balance the space and heat the enemy, it becomes all the designer's heart. For users, the cooling of the blade server is also a huge challenge.

Full understanding of Blade server

Not only to see the blade server energy saving, but also to see its application deployment and operational management of the great potential and advantages. We know that server deployment is a time-consuming, laborious, resource-intensive process in which managers need to install each server in a rack, power and network cabling, and install software for it. In a high-density environment, cabling is one of the most vexing challenges in a deployment. However, with the blade server, the administrator only needs to install and cabling the rack, the individual blade server does not need wiring. Adding new computer resources is as easy as inserting a new blade server, just like adding a hard drive now. Because multiple blade servers can share redundant power supplies, the rack routing is minimized. For many applications, faster deployment of servers will mean more business opportunities.

In terms of manageability, with automated software provisioning tools, you can easily and quickly install software into one or more blade servers with only one network operation. After the software installation of the blade server is completed, the administrator can take advantage of remote management tools for overall management. Users can even manage blade servers and traditional integrated servers in a single rack, reducing resource costs. At the same time, Blade server maintenance is very simple, only need to remove the failed blade Server, and insert the replacement blade server. In addition, the availability of the entire system can be greatly enhanced by configuring a globally hot standby backup server.

Through the above analysis, it can be foreseen that the blade server will play a great role in the new generation of data center application process. However, this does not mean that the overall upgrade of the data center equipment, users can more business situation, in a certain range and region to take the lead in the deployment of Blade server, in short, this is a step-by-step process.

Blade server more Energy efficient

Blade server in the power supply and the problem of heat dissipation, it is easy to cause users to have some misconceptions, such as blade server compared to the cost of electricity. In fact, blade servers are more power-saving than rack-less servers. From the development of the blade server, it has gone through three stages: 2000-2002 is the first phase, this phase is mainly to improve the use of density, and applied to specific users such as telecommunications operators. The second phase from 2003-2006 years, the blade system is no longer specifically designed to increase the density, it adds a lot of technology elements, including management methods, system optimization and so on. At this stage the blade server, despite double-digit growth, still has less than 10% per cent of the overall server market. After 2006 years, the typical characteristics of blade server from the pursuit of high-density, to the pursuit of performance direction. Virtualization, High-performance Computing, grid computing, etc., have become a new application of blade server in this phase.

Blade features no matter how many changes have taken place, the blade server is more energy efficient, and this has never changed. This is also very easy to understand, as the blade server is designed to be implemented by centralizing shared devices such as power, network, and heat dissipation in the chassis. In this way, not only reduce the number of redundant parts used, but also through the "pool" power supply, etc., enjoy better power efficiency. It is understood that compared with the rack-type server, Blade server can save about 30%. That being the case, why do users need to transform the power system? According to an Internet Data center, the head of the power to transform only one item, this year invested 4 million yuan. If the use of Blade server, the high density of its design for the cooling put forward higher requirements for the computer room environment brought greater pressure. If also using the traditional way of wind, its effect is not as good as the wind, and the next to the transformation of the wind need a lot of input. This year alone, they have invested 6 million yuan.

There must be a clarification of the fact that the 42U Rack (cabinet) of the Internet Data Center has never been fully matched. If the distribution of the Internet Data Center 42U cabinet is only 6.8A, the number of servers it can deploy is relatively small. There is a rough algorithm, a 1U rack server current of 1.5A, and a blade of about 1 A, and this refers to the full load of work, the actual work of its data is lower. Because the Internet Data Center rack design power distribution capacity is insufficient, power transformation is the last resort, but this does not mean that blade server charges.

From the operational point of view, Blade server power saving has a very realistic significance, it means that the cost of operating lower. Today, multi-core processors are a hot topic in the industry, in fact, the multi-core processor is a very important intention, is to save power consumption, under the premise of low power consumption, as much as possible to improve the processing capacity of the processor. Therefore, electricity-saving is an important indicator.