Take you to the preliminary Understanding Blade server Technology

&http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/37954.html ">nbsp; Blade servers have become the mainstream of high-performance computing clusters, with many new cluster systems using blade architectures in the world's Super 500 and top 100 supercomputers. Because the use of blade server can greatly reduce the number of external cables required, can greatly reduce the cable connection failure caused by the hidden trouble, improve system reliability.

The IBM-provided Blade Center is a 7U 19 rack device that provides redundant power supplies for blades, redundant fans, snap-backs, and connections to the backplane, as well as installing network switch modules. Each blade Center can be installed with 14 blade servers, the blades of different CPUs can be plugged in, and the blades are supported for hot-swappable. With a blade server, a single cabinet can hold up to 84 blades, a total of 168 processors. At present, IBM blades support different CPU types such as Intel Xeon, Opteron and PowerPC, and different operating systems such as AIX, Linux, and Windows. Because the blade center contains a switch module and a separate management module, it can greatly reduce the required cables and external switches. Its advantages are mainly as follows:
(1) Significantly reduce operating management costs
(2) High processing capacity density, save valuable space and land cost
(3) Low electricity consumption
(4) Low heat dissipation and reduce air conditioning cost
(5) Better reliability design, reduce downtime
(6) Redundant power supply, fan
(7) Optical path diagnosis
(8) The cable connection point is greatly reduced
(9) Redundant switching module and cable Connection
Usually people according to the different shape structure of the server divided into tower, rack, blade server three types, then what is the difference between these three kinds of servers, which are suitable for the application of what?

With the further development of large scale computing and network server's demand for parallel processing capability, the blade server with "collective power" casting powerful processing ability has been more and more valued, should blade server is a major breakthrough in the development of server technology in recent years, its significance is much greater than the increase of processor frequency and memory, Hard disk storage medium capacity increase, why blade server has such an important position, the following author on the basis of their own understanding, and then combined with some relevant technical information for you to explain:
First of all, in the business and enterprise network, generally take the C mode, that is, "client-server" mode, according to the authority of the investigation and prediction, the future of the network development also shows a trend of centralized computing. And the rise of data center to the server configuration density put forward more and more high requirements, it is in this situation, in order to break the limit of individual performance of the server, a new generation of clustered server-blade server.

Why is it called Blade Server, this is based on the characteristics of the product profile named, because the blade server components are flat and flat shape, like a blade, so the product launch when the manufacturers will naturally be named after it , we usually say that the blade server is in the standard height of the rack-type chassis can be inserted in multiple card server unit (that is, blades, it is actually an industry-standard board with processors, memory, and hard drives, and the operating system is installed, so a "blade" is a small server. , this piece of blade combination, data interchange and sharing, in the coordination of system software synchronization work can become a high availability and high-density new servers.

Product Features:

In general, the blade server has the following characteristics, and is almost the advantage of it:

1. High density calculation

High-density is the biggest feature of the blade server, regardless of whether it is high or low in the field of work, but only in terms of computational density. Of course, computing power is not only determined by the amount of processor stack, but the powerful computing power of a single system is not reduced by 4~8 processors alone. So what does the blade rely on to occupy the market? Overall, whether it's the operating system or the application software, are significantly behind the pace of hardware development, distributed applications such as the Web are closer to the distribution of computing--a large number of processes in parallel at the same time, and a single process with very low computational processing requirements, which is consistent with the blade's emphasis on high-density decentralized computing architecture. For blades, the increased computational density allows data centers to serve more customers with less space, and to reduce hosting costs for Web sites.

2. Distributed computing

Even compared with the group-level server, blade because of the configuration of a single blade is downwind, so the need for load balancing/clustering software to achieve good results, the applicable domain is also limited to distributed high-density computing environment: IDC, WEB, domain name resolution.