It enterprise hard to choose Blade Server

To address the rapid increase in the number of servers, exponential growth of data, energy consumption, and virtually impossible infrastructure, many IT organizations have begun to apply virtualization technology and blade server technology to data centers. But be sure to consider the full before you act.

A classic dilemma: the more automated an enterprise needs, the more complex it architecture becomes. As businesses increasingly rely on a variety of collaborative software services, this is becoming increasingly common, with each service created for a revenue-raising goal. These applications rely on a large number of computing resources, as well as a flexible platform for the service-oriented architecture and the IT Infrastructure Library.

And the result? The number of servers is soaring, the data is growing exponentially, the amount of energy consumed and the infrastructure that is almost impossible to manage--in short, the environment in the data center is almost out of control. To manage all this, many IT organizations have turned to virtualization technology and blade server technology.

This successfully solves the problem that the number of servers increases too quickly in several ways. Virtualization Technology achieves space savings and simplifies network connectivity, improving management and operational efficiencies with fewer racks, cables, wires, and energy consumption. Furthermore, virtualization technology provides a stable, platform-independent approach to the product solutions that have been introduced before, providing better tools for monitoring and computing accounts. Virtualization technology also helps data centers provide compatible and adaptable services to meet the needs of users who want better control of their servers-that is, their operating systems and applications-without necessarily supporting disparate independent platforms.

Server virtualization technology enables IT administrators to look at physical server resources in a new light, without having to adjust the operating system, to add or subtract computing resources according to demand, such as meeting the larger demand for computing resources at the end of the month or quarter. Although you still need to support multiple operating systems and applications, but less management of physical resources, the hardware platform will be more fully utilized.

By using blades from HP, IBM, Sun, or other vendors, you can focus more virtual machines or stand-alone operating systems on a flexible, operational, and self-healing platform. A disk-free blade server platform that integrates SAN and network switches is expected to be launched in 2008, which will use more networked storage arrays and effectively combine backup, replication, disaster recovery, and other features with storage architectures.

You might think it's too good to feel true, and maybe you feel right. Blade server has its own disadvantages: Blade server consumes a lot of energy, and generate a lot of heat, most enterprises because of the data center processing power to the blade server. Most of the enterprise's data centers were created more than 20 years ago, and there were no air-cooled microprocessors and disks, but water-cooled mainframes were popular. If your data center doesn't keep up with the new technology, the blade may be too advanced for you.

Based on customer experience, we summarize the advantages and disadvantages of the blade server, to see if the blade server is able to solve the problem facing the data center, or to create new problems for the data center. Can the performance of the blades eliminate the high cost of energy and cooling? Is there a data center design or reconstruction method that ensures that the cost of architecture and equipment does not exceed operational costs?

There is no easy answer to these questions. Just as the driving condition of a car depends on many different driving conditions, the ROI of your blade server or virtual server depends on your own usage. Your capital budget decides whether or when to use these new technologies in the data center, or just transform the data center. To help customers make the right decisions, we recommend that customers carefully consider the following factors: