Blades Made Simple™ » Kevin Houston

Dell Announces 3 New Blade Servers–M820, M520 and M420

Kevin Houston — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:52:41 +0000

Today, Dell announced the addition of 3 new blade servers to its PowerEdge portfolio – the PowerEdge M820, PowerEdge M520 and the PowerEdge M420. Each server offers a unique addition to the Dell blade server family and will be available soon.

PowerEdge M820

The PowerEdge M820 is a full-height, 4-socket blade server that is the first to use the Intel Xeon E5-4600 processor family. The M820 has 48 DIMMs for up to 1.5TB of memory and comes with 2 x Select Network Adapters providing a choice between 10Gb Brocade, Broadcom or QLogic. The server also has 4 additional I/O mezzanine card slots capable of holding additional 10Gb, Infiniband or Fibre cards. The PowerEdge M820 will be available to purchase in mid-Q2 2012. Find out more at:

http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-m820/pd?~ck=anav

PowerEdge M520

If you are familiar with the Dell PowerEdge M610 blade server, then the new PowerEdge M520 shouldn’t be any surprise to you. It offers the same form factor and the same amount of memory, but is based on the newer Intel Sandy Bridge CPU. The PowerEdge M520 is a half-height, 2-socket blade server that uses the Intel Xeon E5-2400 processor family. As with most of the servers in the E5-2400 family, the M520 has 12 DIMMs for up to 192GB of memory. Unlike the M820 or the M620, the PowerEdge M520 does not come with the Select Network Adapter, but instead comes standard with 4 x 1GbE Dual Port LOM. (It is important to note, that a 48-port Blade Module, like the PowerConnect M6348, is required to have all 4 NICs available for use; otherwise only 2 of the 4 are available.) The server also has 2 additional I/O mezzanine card slots capable of holding additional 10Gb, Infiniband or Fibre cards. The PowerEdge M520 is scheduled to be available for purchase in the next few weeks. Find out more at:

http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-m520/pd?~ck=anav

PowerEdge M420

The PowerEdge M420 is a quarter-height, 2-socket blade server that uses the Intel Xeon E5-2400 processor family. The M420 introduces a new concept to Dell’s blade family by allowing up to 32 servers within a single Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade chassis. Each PowerEdge M420 blade server has up to 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2400 CPUs, 6 DIMM slots (for up to 96GB of memory), 2 internal SD slots, a Dual Port 10Gb Broadcom 57810s onboard NIC, 1 x mezzanine expansion.

The M420 quarter-height blades are deployed in the M1000e using a full-height sleeve known as a “subassembly”. While each sleeve does not need to be fully populated with M420 blades in order to be installed, it does occupy the same physical space as a full-height blade, however it can be positioned adjacent to other half-height servers. The M420 offers a great platform for any application using a lot of CPU processing. A 42U rack can hold 4 x Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis and each chassis can hold 32 PowerEdge M420 server. That means you can have up to 128 Dell PowerEdge M420s in a rack. Each M420 can hold 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2400 CPUs with a total of 16 CPU cores so that equates to 2,048 CPU cores in a rack.

The PowerEdge M420 is scheduled to be available for purchase in the next few weeks. Find out more at: http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-m420/pd?~ck=anav

For a list of all of Dell’s blade server offerings, visit http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-mseries-servers?~ck=anav

Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com. He has over 15 years of experience in the x86 server marketplace. Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization. Kevin works for Dell as a Server Specialist covering the Global 500 East market.

Test Report: Power Efficiency Comparison of Dell and Cisco High Memory Capacity Blade Servers

Kevin Houston — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:45:24 +0000

Dell recently published a new whitepaper that compares the performance and power efficiency of four of the Dell PowerEdge M710HD and M620 blades vs. four of the Cisco B250 M2 blade servers. Here is a summary of the key findings:

Performance / watt

The higher performance and lower power draw of the four-blade Dell solutions compared to the UCS B250 M2 blade solution led to the PowerEdge M710HD solution’s 76% higher performance per watt score and the PowerEdge M620 solution’s 108% higher performance per watt score.

Power at Idle

Even with all blades configured with the same amount of system memory, the four-blade PowerEdge M710HD solution consumed 58% as much power at idle as the four-blade UCS B250 M2 solution with its extra DIMMs and supporting circuitry. Similarly, the four-blade PowerEdge M620 blade solution drew just 55% as much power at idle as the Cisco blade solution.

Power at 100% Load

Both of the four-blade PowerEdge solutions, again with the same amount of system memory installed per blade, drew 64% to 67% as much power as the four-blade Cisco UCS B250 M2 blade solution with all blades running at 100% load.

Performance

With the same processor models and the same memory capacity installed in each blade, the four-blade solution based on PowerEdge M710HD blades provided up to 11% higher performance than the four-blade solution based on UCS B250 M2 blades, and the four-blade solution based on PowerEdge M620 blades provided up to 25% higher performance than the UCS blade solution.

Rack density

When the 10U M1000e Modular Blade Enclosure is equipped with its maximum of sixteen M710HD or M620 servers, the solution can fit 1.6 servers per rack unit of space, 2.4 times as dense as the solution with Cisco UCS B250 M2 blades.

Cost

In the configuration tested, the Cisco UCS B250 M2 blade solution costs $112,591.02[1], while the similarly configured Dell PowerEdge M710HD solution costs 34% less at $73,820.00, and the PowerEdge M620 solution costs 33% less at $75,372.00.

To read the report in its entirety, please visit:

http://i.dell.com/sites/content/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/PowerEfficiencyComparisonofDellandCiscoHighMemoryCapacityBladeServers.pdf

To read the writer’s blog post on this report, visit:

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/enterprise/b/inside-enterprise-it/archive/2012/03/26/comparison-of-dell-and-cisco-high-memory-capacity-blade-servers.aspx

Dell Announces 40Gb Blade Server Switch: Dell Force10 MXL 10/40GbE

Kevin Houston — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:56:11 +0000

Dell introduced today a new 40Gb Ethernet Switch module for its Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade system. The Dell Force10 MXL 10/40GbE switch is the first Force10 product introduced to the Dell blade server platform. The Force10 MXL 10/40GbE is a 1/10/40GbE Layer 2 and Layer 3 blade switch and is powered by the Force10 operating system (FTOS).

It will offer 32 internal 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports and up to 240Gb of Ethernet uplinks.

Some of the key features of the Dell Force10 MXL 10/40GbE switch:

Ethernet stacking of up to six switching modules within a single enclosure or spanning multiple enclosures to be managed as one logical device.
Networking flexibility with FlexIO modules that provide support for 40GbE QSFP+, 10GbE SFP+, and 10GBase-T ports.
Support for end-to-end IP storage (iSCSI and Data Center Bridging) into a single 10GbE connection.

According to the Dell press release, the Dell Force10 MXL 10/40GbE will be available this summer. More details will follow as it is released.

Media Links:

“Dell brings 40-Gigabit Ethernet to PowerEdge blades” – ComputerWorld.com

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9226502/Dell_brings_40_Gigabit_Ethernet_to_PowerEdge_blades?taxonomyId=154&pageNumber=1

“Dell Unveils 40GbE-Enabled Networking Switch” – eWeek

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Networking/Dell-Unveils-40GbEEnabled-Networking-Switch-716536/

“Dell Builds on Force10 for Virtual Networking” – Enterprise Networking Planet

http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/datacenter/dell-builds-on-force10-for-virtual-networking.html

Virtualization Performance on Blade Servers

Kevin Houston — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:10:23 +0000

One of the industry-leading independent technology assessment service firms, Principled Technologies, just updated their site with a ton of white papers covering performance on just about any product or technology. You can check out their website at http://www.principledtechnologies.com/default.htm for the complete list, but I wanted to give you the links to their papers that cover virtualization performance on blade servers.

These are the newest white papers, and yes they are mostly Dell. However, keep an eye on

http://www.principledtechnologies.com/Topics/servers.htm as I’m sure they’ll have HP, IBM and Cisco papers up soon.

	Database server consolidation with an Intel Xeon processor E5-2690-based server We tested to see how many dual-socket quad-core legacy servers this new server could consolidate using virtualization.
	Server consolidation and TCO: Dell PowerEdge M620 vs. HP ProLiant BL490 We examine the number of virtual machines each server could support and the total cost of ownership for each server over 3 years.
	Server consolidation and TCO: Dell PowerEdge M620 vs. Dell PowerEdge M710HD We examine the number of virtual machines each server could support and the total cost of ownership for each server over 3 years.
	Server consolidation and TCO: Dell PowerEdge M620 vs. Dell PowerEdge M610 We examine the number of virtual machines each server could support and the total cost of ownership for each server over 3 years

Dell’s PowerEdge M620 Blade Server Offering Up to 768GB RAM

Kevin Houston — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:33:15 +0000

(UPDATED 3/7/12) With the launch of Intel’s Xeon E5-2600 processor, Dell revealed the details of the new PowerEdge M620 blade server. Offering an industry first 24 memory DIMMs in a half-height form factor, the M620 offers up to 768GB of RAM along side the newly announced Intel E5-2600. The Dell PowerEdge M620 also comes with the ability to chose from a variety of LOM (LAN on Motherboard) cards – a feature first seen in the PowerEdge M710HD and M915 last Summer. Formerly known as the Network Daughter Card, the newly renamed feature, called Select Network Adapter, is a removable network card that gives buyers the option of choosing from Broadcom, Intel or QLogic adapters – each offering up to two ports of 10Gb. Since it is removable, it offers investment protection as new technology becomes available. For more features and details about the M620, see below.

CPU Offerings

At the time of launch, Dell is offering the following Intel E5-2600 CPUs on the M620:

Intel® Xeon® E5-2650L 1.80GHz, 20M Cache, 8.0GT/s QPI, Turbo, 8C, 70W
Intel® Xeon® E5-2650 2.00GHz, 20M Cache, 8.0GT/s QPI, Turbo, 8C, 95W
Intel® Xeon® E5-2660 2.20GHz, 20M Cache, 8.0GT/s QPI, Turbo, 8C, 95W
Intel® Xeon® E5-2665 2.40GHz, 20M Cache, 8.0GT/s QPI, Turbo, 8C, 115W
Intel® Xeon® E5-2670 2.60GHz, 20M Cache, 8.0GT/s QPI, Turbo, 8C, 115W
Intel® Xeon® E5-2680 2.70GHz, 20M Cache, 8.0GT/s QPI, Turbo, 8C, 130W

Intel® Xeon® E5-2630L 2.00GHz, 15M Cache, 7.2GT/s QPI, Turbo, 6C, 60W
Intel® Xeon® E5-2620 2.00GHz, 15M Cache, 7.2GT/s QPI, Turbo, 6C, 95W
Intel® Xeon® E5-2630 2.30GHz, 15M Cache, 7.2GT/s QPI, Turbo, 6C, 95W
Intel® Xeon® E5-2640 2.50GHz, 15M Cache, 7.2GT/s QPI, Turbo, 6C, 95W
Intel® Xeon® E5-2667 2.90GHz, 15M Cache, 7.2GT/s QPI, Turbo, 6C, 130W

Intel® Xeon® E5-2603 1.80GHz,10M Cache, 6.4GT/s QPI, No Turbo, 4C, 80W
Intel® Xeon® E5-2609 2.40GHz, 10M Cache, 6.4GT/s QPI, No Turbo, 4C, 80W
Intel® Xeon® E5-2637 3.0GHz, 5M cache, 6.4 GT/s QPI, Turbo, 2C, 80W

If you have software licensed by the core, you’ll be happy to see the E5-2637 CPU, which offers 2 CPU cores while maintaining a high 3.0GHz frequency.

Memory

Although the maximum memory speed with the Romley platform running the Intel Xeon E5-2600 CPU touts a 1600MHz memory performance speed, there is a trade off on capacity. Basically, if you want a lot of memory, you’ll have to run the memory at a slower speed at 1033. To help determine performance vs capacity, I’ve listed a chart below that should help decode things. In the spirit of full disclosure, the 32GB DIMMs, which are required to achieve the maximum capacity of 768GB RAM, will not be available until Q2 2012 (date not provided at this time.) To aid with your memory selection, check out:

http://www.poweredgecpumemory.com

LAN on Motherboard Options

As mentioned above, the PowerEdge M620’s on-board network is available in removable card, known as the Select Network Adapter. While this is new to the M6xx family, it is Dell’s second generation of removal LOM cards. In fact, with the 12G product launch, the Select Network Adapter can be found in the R620 and R720 rack servers too. Below is a chart of the 3 card options, as well as the features they support. ~~In summary, if you want SR-IOV or DCB Support, you’ll want to go with the Intel X520 card – otherwise it’s a battle between Broadcom and QLogic.~~REVISED 3/7/12 – I clearly was under the influence of lack of sleep when I wrote this. The matrix was all messed up. Here is the CORRECT list of supported options:

Other New Options

The PowerEdge M620 comes with 2 x mezzanine I/O card expansion slots (x8 PCIe 3.0) fully available in both the 1 CPU and 2 CPU blade server designs. I was planning on listing the options available for the mezzanine slots on the M620, but the list is too long, however you can find it on the M620 page at http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-m620/pd?~ck=anav. Instead, I want to touch on a couple of other cool features that you might find valuable.

Dual embedded SD slots for Hypervisor – since the market is heading toward encouraging embedded hypervisors, Dell decided to place dual card slots into the M620 designed to be redundant. If you lose your primary SD card, the secondary slot is available to resume the workload.

Now, for my final trick – SCAN THIS QR Tag:

Welcome to the future. No longer will you have to search for assistance with a server product. With the 12th Generation of the Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell is introducing the concept of using QR tags to offer technical assistance in the form of step-by-step videos, reference materials and even help with looking up your service tag.

For more information on the Dell PowerEdge M620, download the the full PowerEdge M620 Technical Guide or visit http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-m620/pd?~.

Intel Announces Sandy Bridge, aka Xeon E5-2600

Kevin Houston — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Intel announced on Tuesday their next generation of 2 socket CPU – the Intel Xeon E5-2600. Formerly code named, “Sandy Bridge,” the E5-2600 is a follow on to the Intel Xeon 5600 series family and offers a real performance increase. In fact, Intel is boasting performance increases from 43% to 62% (depending on the vendor and benchmark.) What is contributing to this massive increase in performance? Let’s take a look.

Compared to previous generation Intel Xeon 5600, the Intel Xeon E5-2600 provides:

Additional CPU Cores – up to 2 additional CPU cores and Up to 8MB more cache
Increased Memory – up to 24 DDR3 Memory DIMMs are available per 2 CPU system. In addition, 32GB DIMMs are supported giving a maximum capacity of 768GB RAM (in a 2 CPU configuration.)
Higher Bandwidth – not only does Intel add a 2nd Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) between the CPUs, they also increased the maximum communication speed to 8.0 GigaTransfers per Second (GT/s). Compared to the Intel Xeon 5600, which had a single QPI that ran at 6.4GT/s, the intra-CPU communication alone provides huge performance gains. Not to be overlooked, Intel also increased the maximum throughput on the memory channels from 1333MHz to 1600MHz.
Tighter Integration – the Intel Xeon E5-2600 marks the beginning of a new era of I/O. The PCI express lanes are now integrated into the platform providing up to 40 lanes of PCIe communication directly to the CPU. Previous generations used an I/O Hub (or IOH) which served as a sort of traffic cop for PCIe I/O. With the PCIe being integrated into the chipset, I/O communication is up to 30% faster and provides additional power savings. Intel’s integration of the PCIe I/O subsystem into the CPU will allow for near future performance using PCIe 3.0 peripherals to provide a 2X performance over previous PCIe generations.

When you combine all of this together, you have a two socket CPU capable of running 16 CPU cores (32 if using Hyper-Threading), 24 memory DIMMs with a maximum capacity of 768GB RAM and 80 PCIe 3.0 I/O lanes. Up until now, these numbers were only available in a large rack mount server but with the release of the Intel Xeon E5-2600, we can now expect to see this performance and ability in 1U servers and even in a blade server form factor.

Other Improvements
While the Intel Xeon E5-2600’s performance over the previous Intel Xeon 5600 is the sexy part of the new offering, there are some other features that shouldn’t be overlooked:

Better Performance at Lower Power – the improvement in the architecture has allowed Intel to achieve up to 70% better performance at the same power footprint. This is done by allowing the system to reduce the power to the memory, cache, I/O and other CPU functions when performance isn’t needed (i.e. when idle.) As well, the CPUs takes advantage of Intel Intelligent Power Technologies like integrated power gate, but that is a bit out of the scope of my goal of “keeping things simple” – so head over to Intel for more on that topic.
New Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) – according to Intel, “AVX is a collection of CPU instructions that increase floating point performance by doubling the length of the FP registers to 256-bits and reducing the number of operations required to execute large FP tasks.” In other words, it allows the CPU to do more complicated instructions quicker. If you run technical, financial, scientific & content creation applications – you probably already know about AVX, so get excited – AVX is better with the Intel Xeon E5-2600.

Check back to BladesMadeSimple.com for continued updates as Dell, HP, IBM and Cisco release their blade servers with the Intel Xeon E5-2600 CPU.

IDC Reports Q4 2011 Shows Continued Blade Server Growth

Kevin Houston — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 01:23:57 +0000

The International Data Corporation’s (IDC) released their Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker today covering Q4 2011. Despite a 7.2% decrease in the worldwide server factory revenue, the blade market continued to experience growth in 4Q11 with factory revenue increasing 8.3% year over year. Other key facts from the IDC press release:

Bladed servers (including x86, EPIC, and RISC blades) accounted for $2.3 billion in revenues, or 16.1% of quarterly server market revenue.
89.6% of all blade revenue is driven by x86-based blades, which now represent 22.5% of all x86 server revenue.

HP maintained the number 1 spot in the server blade market in 4Q11 with 47.4% revenue share – down from 51% in 3Q11, while IBM grew from 18.2% in 3Q11 to 21.5% revenue share in 4Q11. Cisco and Dell rounded out the top 4 blade server vendors with 11.0% and 8.7% factory revenue share, gaining 5.3 and 1.3 points of blade market share, respectively from Q311.

According to Jed Scaramella, research manager, Enterprise Servers at IDC, “While there was softness in other segments, blades remained a strong point and continued as a driver of growth for the server market. The blade server category achieved both its highest reported revenue and revenue share in the fourth quarter of 2011. IDC believes blades are a key element in a server vendor’s portfolio as they are a strategic footprint in the datacenter and important for vendor revenue and profitability. A converged blade platform is an opportunity for additional pull-through revenue beyond the server, including storage, networking, software, and services.”

For the full IDC report covering the Q4 2011 Worldwide Server Market, please visit IDC’s website at:
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23347812

Dell Announces New Blade Server – M620

Kevin Houston — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:39:35 +0000

In anticipation of Intel’s upcoming E5-2600 CPU (aka Sandy Bridge) announcement, Dell officially announced the 12th Generation of PowerEdge servers today. Although the specifics of the 12th Generation, or “12G”, servers have not yet been released, it is very clear there will be a new blade server added to the Dell PowerEdge portfolio: the M620.

While Dell.com announcement site does not have a lot of the details of what’s coming in 12G, The Register has been able to secure some good information on the Dell PowerEdge M620 blade server that I’ll share with you.

The M620′s size is “half-height”allowing you to put up to 16 inside of the Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis.
It will hold up to 2 x Intel Xeon E5 CPUs
It will hold up to 768GB of RAM (the same as its tower and rack equivalent)
The M620 has two hot-plug, 2.5-inch drive bays, and can have SSD, SATA disk, or SAS disk drives slid into those two slots.
The PERC S110 controller with software raid and the PERC H310, H710, and H710P controllers for internal RAID arrays can snap onto this M620 blade.
The M620 has two SD cards for redundant embedded hypervisors to sit on.

Of course, there are a few other goodies that The Register didn’t mention – so I’ll hold off talking about until the official Intel announcement.

To read the full article from The Register discussing the next generation of Dell PowerEdge server (including the tower and rack models,) go to http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/27/dell_poweredge_12g_server_launch/

Photo from Dell.com

Where Did Blade Servers Come From?

Kevin Houston — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:31:56 +0000

As I mentioned yesterday, one of my fellow bloggers, Stephen Foskett, is writing a series on blade servers. His latest post reveals the history of the blade server. Stephen’s article challenged me to do some research of my own – and here’s what I found. Apparently the first “official” patent for a server on blade (patent # 6,411,506 - “High density web server chassis system and method) was awarded in June of 2002 to Christopher G. Hipp and David M. Kirkeby of RLX Technologies. One interesting fact is that U.S. Patents referenced within the document refers to other patents from many leaders of the industry including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Micron, Hitachi and even Dell.

I’ve taken the liberty of downloading the entire patent document for your reference:
High Density Web Server Chassis – Patent 6411506 B1 (1.84Mb, PDF).

If you like technology and are a history buff, I recommend you check out Stephen’s article at http://blog.fosketts.net/2012/02/20/blade-server-history/.

What Is a Blade Server?

Kevin Houston — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:29:13 +0000

My friend, Stephen Foskett, is writing a series of posts introducing blade servers. It’s probably something I should have done a long time ago, but since I’m a slacker and he beat me to it, I’ll give him kudos and do a re-post. I encourage you to read the full article as it’s very enlightening. Here is an excerpt:

“I’ve been watching enterprise IT for over 20 years now, and I’ve seen some radical changes. In the server space, one of the biggest shifts was the form factor of the servers: From tower to rack-mount to blades. But what makes a blade server anyway? Let’s consider this for a moment, as we watch another shift in progress. Blade servers are easily recognized in the data centers, trade shows, and product catalogs of today: They’re the ones that nestle together in an enclosure, sharing some resources rather than standing on their own in a rack or on the floor. But what is the essential element that separates a blade from any other kind of server?”

Read the rest at http://blog.fosketts.net/2012/02/18/blade-server/