The Washington Post has a nice article today from Logan G. Harbaugh of PC World about blade servers. In the article, Logan takes the discussion of blade servers back to the basics. The piece covers the pro’s and con’s of blade servers as well as some good comparisons between blade and rack servers.

While I don’t agree with all of his statements, it is a good read so I encourage you to take 5 minutes and check it out.

Here is the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/02/AR2010090200060.html

Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) is a bit unique in that the chassis is a small component of the overall offering. Cisco’s UCS is a “system” of components that consists of blade servers, blade chassis, fabric extenders and fabric interconnects. The blade chassis is called the UCS 5100. It is a 6 rack unit (6u) tall chassis that can hold anywhere from 4 to 8 blade servers (dependent upon the blade form factor). The chassis comes with 4 front-accessible 2500W single-phase, hot-swappable power supplies that are 92 percent efficient and can be configured to support non-redundant, N+1 redundant, and grid-redundant configurations.

The rear of the UCS5100 chassis offers 4 hot-swap blowers, 4 power plug connectors requiring 15.5A, 220-240V AC. There are also a pair of redundant fabric extenders. This is where Cisco’s design differs from everyone else. These “fabric extenders”, known as UCS 2104XP Fabric Extender simply extend the reach of the onboard 10Gb or Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) I/O fabric from the blade server bays to the management console, known as the fabric interconnect. I previously blogged that there were rumours at one time that there would be an 8 port version of the fabric extender, however to date, I have not seen any proof of this. The UCS 2104XP Fabric Extender provides 4 x 10Gb uplinks, so if you have 8 blade servers, you theoretically would be looking at a 2:1 ratio (8 blade servers to 4 uplinks.) There have been several comments and blog posts on the functionality of the fabric extender, including the infamous Tolly Report that received several comments from the Tolly Group, Cisco employees and HP employees – but in summary, the 4 x 10Gb uplinks are adequate for handling all the I/O that the max 8 blade servers can throw at it. Yes, you can put two in for redundant pathways as well. The Fabric Extenders connect in to the brains of the solution – the fabric interconnect. 

The function of the UCS 6100 fabric interconnect is to connect ALL of the UCS 5100 chassis to the network and storage fabrics.The Cisco UCS 6100 series fabric interconnect currently comes in two flavors – a 20 port (UCS 6120XP) and a 40 port (UCS 6140XP). A 20 port could connect 5 x UCS5100 chassis’ fabric extenders (4 ports x 5 chassis = 20) all the way up to 20 x UCS5100 (1 port per fabric extender). This last example doesn’t seem to be ideal, as you would be running up to 8 x blade servers’ 10Gb I/O traffic up a single 10Gb uplink – but, who knows – I’m not a networking guy, so I’ll have to leave those comments to the experts. Personally, I think that it’s a bunch of marketing fluff… 

When we look at the sheer capacity of the quantity of blade servers that you can fit into a 42u rack, we see that Cisco can offer a maximum of 7 chassis into a rack (6u tall). The stats below provide a good comparison between the different server offerings from Cisco. 

A few things to point out:

• there are no AMD options (Intel only)
• half-width blade servers have a 1 x I/O card whereas full-width blade servers have 2 x I/O cards    

I/O Card Options
Cisco offers 4 different I/O Network Card options for their blade servers:

• Cisco UCS 82598KR-CI 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter  – based on the Intel 82598 10 Gigabit Ethernet controller, which is designed for efficient high-performance Ethernet transport.
• Cisco UCS M71KR-E Emulex Converged Network Adapter – uses an Intel 82598 10 Gigabit Ethernet controller for network traffic and an Emulex 4-Gbps Fibre Channel controller for Fibre Channel traffic all on the same mezzanine card.
• Cisco UCS M71KR-Q QLogic Converged Network Adapter – uses an Intel 82598 10 Gigabit Ethernet controller for network traffic and a QLogic 4-Gbps Fibre Channel controller for Fibre Channel traffic, all on the same mezzanine card.
• Cisco UCS M81KR Virtual Interface Card -  a dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet mezzanine card that supports up to 128 virtual interfaces that can be dynamically configured so that both their interface type (network interface card [NIC] or host bus adapter [HBA]) and identity (MAC address and worldwide name [WWN]) are established using just-in-time provisioning.

  (For more details on these card options, please visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10280/products_data_sheets_list.html)

 As you may notice, there are no card options with fibre-channel only or Infiniband.  This is part of Cisco’s UCS strategy – the network and the storage traffic travel over the same cable from the blade server though the fabric extender to the fabric interconnect where the traffic is separated into network fabrics and storage fabrics.  This design allows for Cisco to require a maximum of 8 cables (4 from each fabric extender) per blade chassis and as few as 2 cables (1 per fabric extender).  Compared to a traditional server environment using multiple 1Gb Ethernet and 4Gb fibre connections per connection, there is a huge savings in cables.

Chassis Switch Options

 As I have previously mentioned, the architecture of Cisco’s UCS blade environment takes an approach of “extending” the I/O connectivity from the blades to the fabric interconnect.  With this design, there are no “switches”, therefore there are no switch options.

Server Management

Cisco’s blade infrastructure management lies within the Cisco UCS 6100 fabric interconnect.  The base management software, called UCS Manager, is the central point of management for the entire UCS environment.  It manages the UCS system, including the blades, the chassis, and the network (both LAN and SAN) – configuration, environmentals, etc.  Take a few minutes to look at the UCS Manager software in this short video:

While the UCS Manager is rich in features, it does have the following limitations:

•(Hardware) Templates can NOT be shared across systems
•Available MAC addresses are scoped per UCS Manager instance (not across the Enterprise)
•Available WWN addresses are scoped per UCS Manager instance (not across the Enterprise)
•Available UUIDs are scoped per UCS Manager instance (not across the Enterprise)

Bottom line – the UCS Manager is limited to each UCS chassis and most of the features are manual steps.  Never fear, however.  Cisco offers BMC’s BladeLogic which adds the following:

•UCS template creation and editing
•Cross-UCS template management
•Cross-UCS MAC and WWN Management
•Local disk provisioning for UCS
•SAN provisioning for UCS
•ESX provisioning for UCS
•Consolidated UCS operator and management action
•Manages UCS resources, VMs, guest OS, and business applications

The catch, however, is that the BMC BladeLogic is an extra cost.  How much – I’m not sure, but it adds something…  Cisco has a really good simulator that highlights what you can do with the UCS Manager software, so if you are interested, take a few minutes to watch.  There is no narration, just a walk-through of the UCS Manager.  I also recommend you view in full screen:

So let me know what you think.  Is there anything I’m missing – anything else you would like to see on this?  Let me know in the comments below.  Make sure to keep an eye on this site as I’ll be posting information on Dell, HP and IBM in the following weeks.

“Oo-rah” (that’s for @jonisick) 

The VMware VMmark web site was recently updated to show Dell’s PowerEdge M910 blade server in the #1 slot (for blades) in the 16 core space. I think the PowerEdge M910 is very intriguing, so I thought I’d spend some time highlighting the features. Before I begin, let me explain what the VMmark testing is about.   VMmark enables equipment manufacturers, software vendors, system integrators and other organizations to:

• Measure virtual machine performance accurately and reliably
• Determine the performance of different hardware and virtualization platforms
• Make appropriate hardware decisions for your virtual infrastructure

VMware developed VMmark as a standard methodology for comparing virtualized systems. According to VMware’s VMmark website, the benchmark system in VMmark is comprised of a series of “sub-tests” that are derived from commonly used load-generation tools, as well as from benchmarks developed by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC®). In parallel to VMmark, VMware is a member of the SPEC Virtualization subcommittee and is working with other SPEC members to create the next generation virtualization benchmark.

In testing the terms, a “tile” is simply a collection of virtual machines (VM’s) that are executing a set of diverse workloads designed to represent a natural work environment.   The total number of tiles that a server can handle provides a detailed measurement of that server’s consolidation capacity.  The more tiles, the better.  The faster the performance, the better.

Top 3 VMmark Results for 16 Core Blade Servers (as of 8/5/2010)…click on the link to open the details

 #1 – Dell PowerEdge M910 (2 Sockets, 16 cores;  Intel Xeon X7560 CPU) running VMware ESX v4.0 –37.11@26 tiles (published 7/13/2010)

#2 – Dell PowerEdge M905 (4 Sockets, 16 cores;  AMD Opteron 8393 SE) running VMware ESX v4.0 – 22.90@17 tiles (published 6/19/2009)

#3 – HP ProLiant BL685 G6 (Four Core AMD Opteron 8389) running VMware ESX v4.0 – 20.87@14 tiles (published 4/24/2009)

• uses Intel Xeon 7500 or 6500 CPUs
• has support for up to 512GB using 32 x 16 DIMMs
• comes 4 Ethernet ports via two embedded Broadcom NetExtreme II Dual Port 5709S Gigabit Ethernet NICs with failover and load balancing.
• has two 2.5″ Hot-Swappable SAS/Solid State Drives
• 4 available I/O mezzanine card slots
• comes with a Matrox G200eW w/ 8MB memory standard
• can function on 2 CPUs with access to all 32 DIMM slots

 

Sometimes it’s easier to view pictures than read descriptions, so take a look at the picture below for a diagram on how this works.

So – that about covers it. 

For more information on the Dell PowerEdge M910, check out the PowerEdge M910 Product Site at
http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/poweredge-m910/pd.aspx?refid=poweredge-m910&s=biz&cs=555

As VMworld 2010 is right around the corner, I wanted to take a few minutes to make a plea to all attendees. 

This year, IF you receive a bag or backpack that you just don’t want, please don’t throw it away, but instead take it home, go to the dollar store and fill  the backpack with pencils, crayons, paper and erasers and donate it to your local school system.  You would be AMAZED to find out the numbers of children who don’t get backpacks and whose familes can not afford the costly school supplies that are required each year.  You will be making some family happy and you’ll get the name “VMware” marketed throughout the schools, getting the next generation of techno geeks ready to learn all about virtualization.

Thanks for the consideration!

(Updated 7/27/2010 – 11 am EST – added info on power and tower options)

 When you think about blade servers, you probably think, “they are too expensive.” When you think about doing a VMware project, you probably think, “my servers are too old” or “I can’t afford new servers.” For $8 per GB, you can have blade servers preloaded with VMware ESXi 4.1 AND 4TB of storage! Want to know how? Keep reading. 

No, I’m not smoking something. I’ve done the configuration and I can show you how to achieve a 4 TB SAN and 3 ESX hosts on blade servers with the IBM BladeCenter S. Before I can explain what I’ve done, let me give you the basics of the IBM BladeCenter S. 

Overview of the IBM BladeCenter S 

At 7U high, the chassis of the IBM BladeCenter S is the same height as the original IBM BladeCenter (now called the BladeCenter E). The chassis uses the same blade servers as the rest of the IBM blade chassis family, but the chassis holds only 6 blade servers – primarily due to the addition of locally attached storage drives. In addition, the chassis has the option to add a DVD drive for access to local media. 

In contrast, the SAS RAID Controller Module (IBM part #43W3584) allows for you to pool the storage and offer access to these arrays to each blade server that has the SAS Connectivity Card installed. Volumes that are created can be assigned to a specific blade or shared by several blade servers. The IBM SAS RAID Controller Module supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5 and 10 and each module also comes with RAID battery backup module. There are some caveats to be aware of: only SAS or NL SAS drives are supported (no SATA); the maximum volume size is currently limited to 2TB and the maximum number volumes each blade server can have is 8 (for a total of 48 volumes per chassis.) Another important thing to take note is that you must have 2 x SAS RAID Controller Modules, which sit in I/O Bays #3 and #4. This provides a redundant connection for each blade server with the SAS Connectivity Card. In fact, since I brought it up, let’s take a closer look at how the modules work in the IBM BladeCenter S. 

BladeCenter S a Look From BehindWhen you look at the back of the IBM BladeCenter S, it may look confusing, but don’t worry – it’s pretty straight forward. The chassis comes standard with 2 x 1450w power supplies standard and a single Advanced Management Module. If you are using high wattage blade servers or using the second DSM, you probably will need the 2nd set of power supplies (IBM part # 46C7438). If your budget is tight and you can’t afford to pony up the additional $599 U.S. list I recommend you take advantage of IBM’s Power Calculator prior to purchase to see if you need the 2nd set of power supplies. Following the design of the other IBM BladeCenter chassis, the IBM BladeCenter is cooled by a set of 4 redundant hot-swap blower modules. Don’t bother looking for any other fans or cooling devices, because you won’t find them. These four blowers cool the entire chassis, modules and blade servers. 

Management 
The Advanced Management Module (AMM) is the device that provides you with LOCAL keyboard, video and mouse connectivity (although only USB for keyboard and mouse) as well as an ethernet port to connect into your management network. The AMM gives you the ability to manage / monitor all of the chassis’ thermals as well as remotely control the blade servers and the I/O modules. In all honesty, the AMM is feature rich, so if you want to take a peek at what it can do, take at look at this IBM BladeCenter S Advanced Management Module simulator. Unlike the other IBM blade chassis, there is not an option for a redundant AMM, however in the event of a failure your blade servers, I/O modules, fans and blowers will continue to function without penalty. 

I/O Architecture 

The biggest technical confusion I see from engineers and customers alike is around the I/O layout of the blade chassis. The IBM BladeCenter S is a bit dissimilar to the other IBM chassis in the BladeCenter family so let me explain how it works. There are 4 I/O bays in the IBM BladeCenter S. The 1st I/O bay maps to the NICs that come on the motherboard of each blade server. If you are familiar with rack-mount servers, you know they typically have 2 x 1Gb Ethernet ports. The IBM Blade servers are no different – they also have 2 x 1Gb Ethernet NICs. In order for them to be “lit up” you need to have a module in bay 1 that can allow the signal from the blade server to extend out of the chassis. To simplify things – think of having a power outlet in the wall at home and connecting an extension cord to it so you can turn on a light that is a few feet away. The same rudimentary concept is how it works in the blade infrastructure. The only difference is, with the IBM BladeCenter S, both NIC ports 0 and 1 go to the I/O Module Bay #1. This means if that module has an issue, then those 2 NICs located on the motherboard of each blade server will be dead. There is no redundancy with the onboard NICs in the IBM BladeCenter S (unlike the other IBM BladeCenter chassis.) Why did IBM design it this way? Well, the original target market for the IBM BladeCenter S was small businesses and remote offices. When you look at those environments – how many have redundant NICs for the rack / tower server NICs? Odds are none. With that in mind, IBM designed the BladeCenter S to only have a single I/O module for both onboard NICs. Never fear, though. After a few months, IBM revised the design to allow for I/O Module #2 to provide an additional 2 NICs, using the 2/4 port Ethernet adapter (IBM part # 44W4479) on each blade server. The card is designed to provide 4 Ethernet Ports, however with the BladeCenter S, only 2 ports are connected. Therefore with network modules in I/O Module Bay 1 and 2 you can get 4 NICs. Add this to the 2 x SAS storage cards that we mentioned in the sections above and you “should” have adequate architecture to provide a VMware environment. 

The $32,000 Design 

Now that I’ve spent a few moments telling you what the IBM BladeCenter S is all about, perhaps you understand the potential. So how did I get to the $32,000 design that enables you to have 4 TB and 3 ESX hosts? I won’t devulge in the actual bill of materials, but here’s what I came up with: 

• 1 x IBM BladeCenter S chassis
• 1 x Disk Storage Module
• 4 x 1 TB Near Line Storage Disk Drives
• 1 set of 1450W Power Supplies
• 2 x Server Connectivity (Ethernet) Modules
• 2 x SAS RAID Connectivity Modules
• 1 x DVD
• 3 x HS22 blade servers – each with 2 x Intel E5620 Xeon Processors, 24GB RAM, SAS Connectivity Card, ESXi 4.1 USB Memory Key

Total U.S. List Price (as of 7/26/2010): $30,768.00 

Yes, I also know that HP has an offering (the BladeSystem C3000) that could compete to this design – however IBM is the only blade server vendor that offers dedicated local disk storage. HP’s design takes up a blade server slot. Perhaps I’ll write up something on this in the future. 

THIS SECTION ADDED ON 7/27/2010 – I’ve added this section to cover a couple of pieces that I left off in the original post.

Power
A really valuable feature of the IBM BladeCenter S is the ability to run on 110 v or 220 v.  Use of 110 v is ideal for remote or small offices.  The BladeCenter S power supplies are auto-sensing so you can use the same power supplies.  There are a few power categories to choose from with the BladeCenter S:

• Redundant AC Power Source – in this policy, the power limit is set to equal the capacity of N power modules.  According to IBM’s Implementing the IBM
  BladeCenter S Chassis Redbook, this policy is the most conservative approach and is recommended when all four power modules are installed. When the chassis is correctly wired with dual AC power sources, one AC power source can fail without affecting your blade server operation. 
• Redundant Power Module Policy – in this policy, the power limit equals the capacity of one less than the number of power modules installed (more than one power module must be present). One power module can fail without affecting blade server operation.  If a single power module fails, all the blade servers that are powered on will continue to operate at normal performance levels.
• No Redundancy – all power modules are used, there is no redundancy and if you lose a power supply and the power demands exceed the capacity of the available power modules, the chassis will power down… Not recommended.

Office Enablement Kit
For those environments where a standard server rack is not ideal, IBM offers the Office Enablement Kit (part # 201886X).  This adds an additional few hundred dollars, but it gives you an 11u rack enclosure, complete with front and rear locking doors and wheels.  It also comes with an acoustic attenuation module that helps muffle the sound.  (YouTube video on this can be seen here.)  As mentioned above, the IBM BladeCenter S is only 7U tall, so the additional 4U can be used for an optional Flat Panel Monitor kit (shown in the image to the left) or perhaps additional storage or networking.  This kit really helps to finalize an “all-in-one” solution for small or remote environments.

Yes, I know it’s only 4 x 1TB drives, and I know it’s Near-Line SAS drives, however it is enough resources to help YOU create that VMware infrastructure that you need. Of course, the VMware licensing will be extra, but I just saved you a ton of money – now you can afford it… 

So – what do you think? Is this appealing, or is this just a pipe dream? Let me know your thoughts. I’m really interested in getting an idea of whether this design would really work in your world.

Over the next two days, I will have the opportunity to participate in Gestalt IT’s 3rd Field Day.  Over the next few days, I’ll be stepping outside of my “blades only” discussion and I’ll be blogging about this event.  So that you will appreciate the posts, let me give you some background on this event.

Who is GestaltIT? 
Gestalt IT is a website (www.GestaltIT.com) that is maintained by a group of individuals with differing technical backgrounds but who all share a common focus to enable the best in IT infrastructure solutions. Each member who writes on GestaltIT.com works in end-user consulting, integration services, or in-house IT organizations. 

What is GestaltIT Field Day?
In a quick summary – it’s a two day invitation only event for IT bloggers to get exposed to vendor sponsors with the key goal of getting honest feedback on their products and technology.  The event was created after a few members of GestaltIT attended an HP blogger event and determined the format needed a non-vendor sponsored approach, so 5 weeks later, the first GestaltIT Tech Field Day was held in San Jose.  Founder, Stephen Foskett summarized the event as,

” This unique event brings together innovative IT product vendors and independent thought leaders who have immense influence on the ways that products and companies are perceived and understood by the general public. The world of media has changed, with social media and blogging gaining special importance.

Our Field Day is an opportunity for tech companies and independent writers to get to know each other. Ultimately, we hope to provide a forum for engagement, education, hands-on experience, and feedback.”

Which Vendors Will be Participating in GestaltIT Tech Field 2010 in Seattle?
The 2 day event is jammed pack full of meetings.  We will be meeting with Veeam Software , a new start-up storage company (to be disclosed today), Compellent, F5, NEC and possibly Microsoft. 

If you want to follow the vendors on Twitter, I encourage you to use the Tech Field Day 3 Vendor Twitter List:

http://twitter.com/TechFieldDay/lists/tfd3-sponsors

Who was invited to attend?
The list of attendees, also known as “delegates” are a great mixture of virtualization, software, and networking experts.  I encourage you to take a few minutes to vist their websites and blogs as well as add them to your Twitter feeds.

	Ethan Banks	Packet Attack Packet Pushers Podcast	@ECBanks
	Jason Boche	Boche.net	@JasonBoche
	Ilja Coolen	Ilja CoolenStorageMonkeys	@iCoolen
	Rod Haywood	Musings of Rodos	@Rodos
	Kevin Houston (ME)	Blades Made Simple Corus 360	@Kevin_Houston
	Howard Marks	Network ComputingDeep Storage	@DeepStorageNet
	John Obeto	Absolutely Windows	JohnObeto
	Bob Plankers	The Lone Sysadmin	@Plankers
	W. Curtis Preston	Backup Central	@WCPreston
	Derek Schauland	Technically Speaking TechRepublic	@WebJunkie
	Craig Stewart	VirtualPro Gestalt IT	@VirtualProUK

If you want to follow all of the tweets by these delegates, add the Tech Field Day 3 Delegate Twitter List to your account:

http://twitter.com/TechFieldDay/tfd3-delegates

NOW – the details
If you are still reading, then you probably care to know more.  So let me give you some highlights.

We’re stayting at the Cedarbrook Lodge in SeaTac, WA.  It’s a beautiful lodge (check out the pictures on their site) with a ton of ammenities.  In fact, there’s actually a lobby area on every floor that is filled with bottled waters, candied fruit and pretzels as well as bags of potato chips.  So much for dieting…  The event was kicked off with a group dinner in a private dining room led by Stephen Foskett.  Following the dinner Stephen introduced the “Perilous Foskett Gift Exchange“.  I can’t provide the details of the exchange, as I think I’m sworn to secrecy.  I can tell you that it was like having a “white elephant gift exchange” while blindfolded.  The deal behind the gift exchange is that all gifts are fun and reasonably cool, but only one is Magical and Revolutionary. 

As luck would have it, I walked away with the Magical and Revolutionary gift – an Apple iPad!  It was quite appropriate seeing how I was wearing my “Apple Kills Flash” t-shirt.   Thanks to Stephen and GestaltIT for this awesome gift – I can’t wait to use it while on the Microsoft campus later today.

For more about the GestaltIT Tech Field Day – visit http://gestaltit.com/field-day/faq/

Disclaimer – I am attending the Field Days as a guest of Gestalt IT. Travel, accommodations and the iPad I received is provided as part of the event by GestaltIT Media.  The writings and opinions expressed on my blog are my opinions and not those of Gestalt IT or any of the sponsors of the event.

What’s the process to design an HP blade server?  Find out on my interview with Gary Thome, Chief Blade Architect for HP.  Thanks to the friends at SDR News, I was able to talk with Gary at the HP Tech Forum last month in Las Vegas.  In the video below, Gary discusses the steps it takes for HP to design the next generation blade and he discusses the latest blade servers announced at the HP Technology Forum.

Disclaimer: airfare, accommodations and some meals are being provided by HP, however the content being blogged is solely my opinion and does not in anyway express the opinions of HP.

One of the biggest things revealed at HP Technology Forum in Las Vegas last month was the introduction of the HP VirtualConnect FlexFabric Module.  According to HP, this new module allows for “one module” to access “any data or storage network” and is a key piece of HP’s Converged Infrastructure.  Thanks to my friends at SDR News, I had the opportunity to discuss HP’s converged infrastructure with the guy in charge of designing HP’s strategy, Doug Oathout,Vice President of Converged Infrastructure at HP.  

Disclaimer: airfare, accommodations and some meals are being provided by HP, however the content being blogged is solely my opinion and does not in anyway express the opinions of HP.

They make it look so complicated in the movies.  Detailed covert operations with the intent to hack into a casino’s mainframe preceeded by weeks of staged planned rehearsals, but I’m here to tell you it’s much easier than that.  

This is my story of how I had 20 seconds of complete access to The Venetian Casino’s data center, and lived to tell about it.

Now, before I go on, I must apologize to all of the hopeful future visitors of The Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.  I have a feeling that security will get tightened down following this story.  So, let me set the stage.  I was asked to attend the HP Technology Forum in Las Vegas to blog about the event and cover it via Twitter.  Part of the agenda for the blogging attendees, and the media, was a tour of The Venetian Hotel and Casino’s Data Center.  I jumped at the opportunity.  I always enjoy customer data centers since it gives me the chance to view what “real people” are doing.  Once we landed at the Sands Hotel and Casino, I was fortunate to be part of the first group of 15 or 20 people so we hiked over to the hidden area where the data center was located.  Well, it wasn’t really hidden, just a door that said, “Employees Only.”  We rode up an elevator one or two floors and came out into a desolate barren hallway that gave the appearance of a hospital.  The hallway made a few turns and we came out into a set of office cubicles.  On the other side were the double doors leading to the data center.  No metal barred doors, no retina scans, no lasers – just two plain doors leading into the data center.  I should’ve know this was a sign of things to come.

Quick Venetian Casino Data Center Facts

* 3 Major Data Centers: Las Vegas, Singapore and China
* 500 physical servers in Las Vegas (very little virtualization)
* They use pure Ethernet (IP) for the machines in Singapore; a mix of Serial and IP in Las Vegas 

As we entered the data center, I quickly realized The Venetian was a Dell shop.  Did I mention this was a tour hosted by HP?  After inquiring about the large numbers of Dell servers, the CTO of The Venetian Casino, Steve Vollmer, made it clear that they do use a wide variety of manufacturers for their servers, however they are 100% HP Networking.   Usually when you are given a customer tour by a vendor, like HP, it’s an ALL VENDOR customer – meaning they have HP everything  but this was a “real customer data center” tour.  Kudos to Michael Thacker and the HP Public Relations team on finding a real customer with a mix of vendors’ gear.  Which leads me to how I got left behind.

I’m a server guy – networking gear is out of my expertise, so while the rest of the media and bloggers were interviewing Mr. Vollmer, I started wondering around taking pictures (no video allowed.)  I noticed that all of the physical servers (Dell, IBM and HP) were using the on-board Ethernet adapters only.  Very interesting.  It was mentioned that the casino machines are simply computers, so it makes sense that all of the communication is IP based.  As I wondered around to the last aisle of racks, I came across an HP BladeSystem!  Very cool.  I thought they were stuck on old, aging equipment, but here stood the royal crown (INSERT angelic sounds and bright light here).  Sitting right above it was a Dell M1000e Blade Chassis.  Wow – these guys are true to being a multi-vendor customer.  As I was wiping up the drool off the floor, I heard the door slam to the Data Center.  NOTHING but the whirl of server fans and A/C air blowing around.   Now my first thought was that I was the last person and I’m about to get pulled out by the Network Admin who was on the tour with us.  I turned the corner to find no one.   I was alone!

You’ve got to be kidding me.  Surely I’m not standing in a Las Vegas casino’s data center BY MYSELF – but I was.  Now, many things ran through my head – so many movies have been made about breaking into casinos and here I was in the heart of millions of electronic dollars.  I’d like to be able to conclude this story with some amazing details on how I logged onto the casino servers and transferred money to my offshore account but I can’t.  a) I’m a good person.  I don’t steal, lie or cheat and b) I didn’t have a USB key on me.  The reality is, once I realized I was alone I knew I had to get out of the data center as quickly as possible, so I looked up at the overhead camera, gave a smile and walked out the double doors to quickly catch up to the group heading back downstairs.

There’s a few lessons to be learned here:
1) Real customers use a mix of vendors for their hardware – not just one vendor
2) Always carry a USB key with you – you never know when you need it
3) Don’t waste your time breaking in to a casino – just tour their data center with a large crowd

That’s my story.  Now I just hope I don’t get any calls from the F.B.I…

Disclaimer: airfare, accommodations and some meals are being provided by HP, however the content being blogged is solely my opinion and does not in anyway express the opinions of HP.

Along with the Intel blade server announcements, Tuesday HP also announced two new AMD based blades, the BL465c G7 and BL685G7.  Although originally viewed as a refresh of their existing AMD blade servers, while at the HP Tech Forum in Las Vegas, I found there were a few interesting facts.  Let’s take a look.

BL465c G7
Before Tuesday’s announcement, HP had 2 Dual CPU AMD blades –  the BL495 blade server (based on the AMD Opteron 2300) and the BL465c G6 blade server (based on the AMD Opteron 2400.)  The BL495 had NO hot-plug drives, but maximum memory slots whereas the BL465c G6 offered fewer memory slots but offered hot-plug drives.  The 7th Generation (G7) of the BL465c takes a step toward combining the benefits of the BL495 and the Bl465c G6.  The BL465c G7 is a half-height blade server that has 2 AMD Opteron 6100 CPUs, supports up to 256GB of RAM AND offers 2 hot-plug drive bays. 

If you look at the image of the BL456c G7 on the left, you see only a single hot-plug drive – so where’s the 2nd?  It’s BEHIND the drive you see.  In a very innovative approach, the drives are stacked one behind the other but still “hot-plug” and serviceable without impacting the other drive.  It’s a bit hard to imagine, so take a few minutes to watch my video of the BL465c G7 from the HP Tech Forum EXPO floor (below.)  It’s also important to note this 7th generation server also comes standard with the dual port FlexFabric I/O standard on the motherboard as announced with the additional G7 blade models.

 Here are the specifics of the BL465c G7

• Up to two AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors
• Up to 256 GB of DDR3 memory
• 10GbE NC551i FlexFabric 2 Ports
• Smart Array P410i RAID controller
• Up to two hot plug disk drives
• Two mezzanine I/O expansion slots
• Insight Control with iLO Advanced (iLO 3)

For more information on the BL465c G7, check out HP’s web site.

BL685c G7
The 7th generation of the BL685c provides a 4 socket AMD Opteron 6100.  Code named, “Magny-Cours“, the AMD Opteron 6100 gives a substantial performance increase over the previous generation.  The BL685c G7 comes standard with 32 memory slots which can reach a max of 512GB of RAM. 

Here are the specifics of the BL685c G7:

• Up to four AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors
• Up to 512 GB of DDR3 memory
• (2) 10GbE NC551i FlexFabric 2 Ports per controller
• Smart Array P410i RAID controller
• Up to two hot plug disk drives
• Three mezzanine I/O expansion slots
• Insight Control with iLO Advanced (iLO 3)

For more information on the BL685c G7, check out HP’s web site.

Closer Look at the BL465c G7 and BL685c G7 from HP Tech Forum EXPO