NOTE: IDC revised their report on May 28, 2010. This post now includes those changes.
IDC reported on May 28, 2010 that worldwide server sales for Q1 2010 factory revenues increased 4.6 4.7% year over year to $10.4 billion in the first quarter of 2010 (1Q10). They also reported the blade server market accelerated and continued its sharp growth in the quarter with factory revenue increasing 37.1% 37.2% year over year, with shipment growth increasing by 20.8% compared to 1Q09. According to IDC, nearly 90% of all blade revenue is driven by x86 systems, a segment in which blades now represent 18.8% of all x86 server revenue. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: May 2010
(UPDATED) Prize Fight: IBM MAX5 vs Dell FlexMem Bridge
Updated 5/24/2010 – I’ve received some comments about expandability and I’ve received a correction about the speed of Dell’s memory, so I’ve updated this post. You’ll find the corrections / additions below in GREEN.
Since I’ve received a lot of comments from my post on the Dell FlexMem Bridge technology, I thought I would do an unbiased comparison between Dell’s FlexMem Bridge technology (via the PowerEdge 11G M910 blade server) vs IBM’s MAX5 + HX5 blade server offering. In summary both offerings provide the Intel Xeon 7500 CPU plus the ability to add “extended memory” offering value for virtualization, databases and any other workloads that benefit from large amounts of memory. Continue reading
Dell FlexMem Bridge Helps Save 50% on Virtualization Licensing
Let’s face it. Virtualization is everywhere.
Odds are there is something virtualized in your data center. If not, it soon will be. As more workloads become virtualized, chances are you are going to run out of “capacity” on your virtualization host. 
When a host’s capacity is exhausted, 99% of the time it is because the host ran out of memory, not CPU. Continue reading
More Blade Server Rumours
It’s been a while since I’ve posted what rumours I’m hearing, so I thought I’d dig around and see what I can find out. NOTE: this is purely speculation, I have no definitive information from any vendor about any of this information so this may be false info. Read at your own risk. Continue reading
Another Dell Innovation – Lifecycle Controller
Perhaps one of Dell’s best kept secrets on their 11G servers (blade, rack and tower) is something called Lifecycle Controller. This innovative offering allows a user to configure the hardware, run diagnostics and prep the server for an operating system. “SO WHAT?” you are probably thinking – “HP and IBM have this with their SmartStart and ServerGuide CD’s!” Yes, you are right, however Continue reading
Running CAD on a Blade? Possible on HP’s WS460c G6 Workstation Blade
What if you could run a graphics intensive application, like CAD from Chicago, and you were sitting in Atlanta? What if you could work on a multi-million dollar animated movie feature from the luxury of your home? These and more could be possible with the HP WS460c G6 Workstation Blade. Continue reading
Yet Another Win for HP Blades, but Why?
I heard a rumour on Friday that HP has been chosen by another animated movie studio to provide the blade servers to render an upcoming movie. To recount the movies that have used / are using HP blades: Continue reading