Server market: What are the advantages of blade?

Because of the http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13883.html "> Virtualization Technology and Cloud computing, the blade server seems to have adapted to this tide to become a preferred hardware choice for users." But the blade server cabinet market is still in the initial stage, blade server shipments in the entire server product share of the proportion is not large.

However, because of the high computational density and flexible management of blades, the blade server is especially suitable for compute-intensive enterprise applications, for example, it is suitable to be deployed as HPC in a clustered way, in which the blade server cabinet has the advantages of rack type.

What is a blade server?

Blade server is a highly available high-density Low-cost server platform designed specifically for the special application industry and high-density computer environments, the main structure is a large body chassis, with many "blades" inside, where each blade is actually a system board, similar to a separate server, They can start their own operating system from the local hard disk. Each blade can run its own system, service to the specified different user groups, there is no association between each piece of "blade" power supply, cooling, network connectivity, external storage connectivity and other requirements are provided by the blade chassis unified. In practical use, these boards can be assembled into a server cluster through system software. In cluster mode, all blades can be connected to provide a high-speed network environment, share resources, and serve the same user base. By inserting new blades into the cluster, you can improve overall performance, and because each blade is hot-swappable, the system can easily be replaced and the maintenance time minimized.

What are the advantages of blade servers?

From the beginning of the blade server in the public eye, the promotion of its benefits is accompanied by, is it really so good? Let's take a look at where the blades are superior to the rack-type servers.

Advantages of space density

The blade saves more space than a rack-less server. In fact, the blade server has increased the space density of the rack server by 50%. When the cabinet system is configured, the LU Rack Server system is migrated to the blade server, which occupies 1/3 to 1/2 of the original space. In a standard rack-and-cabinet environment, blade server processing density increased four to five times times.

Computer room wiring and management advantages

Blade server in the computer room wiring as long as the unified layout of network cable and power cord. The blade server does not need artificial wiring, while the rack server to each server's network cable, power cord for wiring, if a 42U cabinet to install more than one 1U server, the cabinet behind the wiring is very much, it will look very messy.

Extensibility Advantages

The advantage of 1U rack-type server is that it adopts standard server design technology, standard peripherals, standard interface, RAID function, redundancy function, can run independently and assume the task. In terms of extensibility, the rack-type server is less scalable in the chassis because of the small enclosure space, but it can be extended very effectively through server clusters or external expansion cabinets. Blade servers are innovative in scaling up and outward scaling. Adding a new server typically simply inserts a new single-processor or multiprocessor blade into the open Bay of the chassis.

The blade server can be plugged into an expanded infrastructure. In addition, the option module inside the chassis can also enable us to add once in the external connection can realize the function of sharing, blade technology modular design to achieve rapid expansion.

The advantages of reliability

When using a normal 1U rack server scenario, by a large number of power lines, cable generated by the insertion point to form a large number of potential "problem point", replaced by Blade server chassis and blade server out-of-the-Box solution, the original network, the power connector point reduced, but also increased the reliability of the system.

All key components of the blade server can be redundant or hot-swappable, including cooling systems, power supplies, Ethernet controllers and switches, intermediate backplane and backplane, hard drives, and service processors. Removing a server for maintenance only means pulling the blade out of the chassis, as simple as removing hot-swappable hard drives. Advanced Blade Server systems provide an intelligent way to achieve highly sensitive maintenance. The Advanced diagnostics function can instruct the maintenance staff to find the faulty parts directly, so as to achieve rapid and effective recovery, and some blade servers will not even have a single point of failure. Rack-and-server maintenance is more complex than a blade.

Conclusion

In summary, blade servers can maximize the data center space, shorten deployment time, reduce administrator management burdens, and reduce energy consumption. But it is slightly less flexible and more sexually desirable than a rack-less server. So, when you are affected by the market to prepare a brain into the blade deployment, carefully consider the status of the enterprise and weigh the pros and cons is the most important.