Making blade servers simple
Posted in Cisco on Jan 3rd, 2011
As I’m sure most of you already know, Cisco has released an anticipated update to the firmware for UCS. Of the dozens of enhancements that were added or modified, perhaps one of the most interesting is Cisco’s integration of their rack-based “C-Series” line into the UCS Platform. This provides users with a single interface to [...]
I recently received a comment on my previous post concerning Cisco’s market share (“What’s the Truth About Cisco’s Market Share“) which has me more confused. The comment admits that Cisco has not released any market share data to IDC, but that when you look at the Cisco Q1 2010 Earnings Call and compare it to [...]
It’s always fun to take a look at the past, so today I wanted to revisit my very first blog post. Titled, “Cisco UCS vs IBM BladeCenter H”, I focused on trying to compare Cisco’s blade technology with IBM’s. Was I successful or not – it’s up to you to decide. This article ranks at [...]
Posted in Cisco on Oct 19th, 2010
What is Cisco’s blade server market share? That seems to be the mystery question that no one can really answer. The previous IDC quarterly worldwide server report mentioned nothing about Cisco, yet readers and bloggers alike claim Cisco is #3, so what IS the true answer?
Who rules the blade server world? IBM? Dell? HP? Cisco? Tell us what you think.
Posted in Cisco on Sep 14th, 2010
Thanks to fellow blogger, M. Sean McGee (http://www.mseanmcgee.com/) I was alerted to the fact that Cisco announced on today, Sept. 14, their 13th blade server to the UCS family – the Cisco UCS B230 M1. This newest addition performs a few tricks that no other vendor has been able to perform.
Posted in Cisco, Server Comparisons on Aug 24th, 2010
Updated on 9/13/2010 with link to Sean McGee’s I/O Card Blog Post One of the questions I get the most is, “which blade server option is best for me?” My honest answer is always, “it depends.” The reality is that the best blade infrastructure for YOU is really going to depend on what is important [...]
(Updated to include links to results) I’ve had a few questions lately about “the best” blade server to use for virtualization – specifically VMware virtualization. While the obvious answer is “it depends”, I thought it would be an interesting approach to identify the blade servers that ranked in the top 5 in VMware’s VMmark benchmark. [...]
Posted in Cisco on Apr 12th, 2010
I recently heard a rumour that Cisco was coming out with an 8 port Fabric Extender (FEX) for the UCS 5108, so I thought I’d take some time to see what this would look like. NOTE: this is purely speculation, I have no definitive information from Cisco so this may be false info. Before we discuss [...]
Posted in Cisco, Dell, IBM, Server Comparisons on Apr 8th, 2010
Cisco recently announced their first blade offering with the Intel Xeon 7500 processor, known as the ”Cisco UCS B440-M1 High-Performance Blade Server.” This new blade is a full-width blade that offers 2 – 4 Xeon 7500 processors and 32 memory slots, for up to 256GB RAM, as well as 4 hot-swap drive bays. Since the server is [...]