How to influence Enterprise TCO Blade Server Analysis

What is http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13737.html "> Blade server? The best way to answer this question is to compare the blade server to a traditional rack 1U (one rack unit) server. An Intel Blade server chassis can install up to 14 dual-core Xeon servers or 7 four-core Xeon servers in only 7U rack space.

What is a blade server? The best way to answer this question is to compare the blade server to a traditional rack 1U (one rack unit) server. An Intel Blade server chassis can install up to 14 dual-core Xeon servers or 7 four-core Xeon servers in only 7U rack space.

Blades and Racks

Because all of these stand-alone blades are installed in a shared blade chassis, the cost per server is reduced as the blade server increases. This is because the chassis resources (power, refrigeration, cabling, and so on) are shared, and each new blade server adds only the server's kernel cost to the TCO. Compared to the old method of adding an entire new 1U or 2U rack-mount server for each new application, this approach obviously saves a lot of cost. In fact, on average, the cost balance point of a new server is 6.5 blade servers equivalent to a complete 1U dual-core Xeon server, while 1.8 blades are equivalent to 2U four core Xeon Blades.

These are the main components of a traditional 1U server: Ethernet control cards, disk control cards and drives, logical motherboards configured with chipsets, memory, two processors, support hardware (including power supplies), cooling fans, and other components that take up a lot of space, Generate large amounts of heat and cause high costs.

Even if all of these basic components are installed, the traditional rack-mount server still does not have processing, storage, or network connectivity capabilities.

The base of the blade server does not include support hardware, power supply, or cooling fan. All of these components are included in the so-called chassis. The shared chassis is equipped with a built-in network connection device and a centralized management system for blade servers, which includes switches that reduce the number of cables.

By configuring these components in a shared enclosure, servers that contain processors, memory, logical motherboards, storage devices, and network-attached devices become smaller and more suitable to be installed in centralized data centers.

Power supplies, fans, floppy disk drives, switches, and ports are shared between blades. The advantages of blade servers include reducing the use of hundreds of cables between racks used to increase and migrate servers. By sharing switches and power components, space is saved, and blades are also easier to achieve with higher density.

Intel launched a wide-ranging study in 2004 on the potential benefits of blade servers, when the blades entered the market for only three years and identified lower acquisition and operating costs for blade server implementation, troubleshooting, and maintenance.

How much is the cost savings?

Intel has organized a team of experts from various fields to lead the research, such as storage area networks (Sans), network devices, system management, platforms, and data center technologies. The team also learned that blade servers can also reduce the need for power, refrigeration, space, and cabling.

Intel's total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis shows that acquisition costs may be reduced by 10%-20%, implementation and troubleshooting costs reduced by 3.8%-10.6%, and equipment costs by 8.5%-25.3%.

The following is a detailed analysis of these aspects:

Acquisition Cost: The blade server is compared to the traditional rack server again. Traditional rack servers need to be equipped with cables, network switches, management software, operating system software, storage Area Network (SAN) infrastructure, a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

Unlike blades and rack servers, these parts are part of a whole system. Blade servers have the best value when comparing server solutions. When calculating the cost of each part needed to build a traditional rack system, and then comparing the price of a monolithic blade system with the same functionality, the savings are significant.