A newly published study by Principled Technologies reports in tests that the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade environment delivered up to 91.7% greater throughput while running a virtualized OLTP database workload compared to a similarly priced Cisco UCS 5108 blade environment. In addition they found that the Dell environment delivered consistent scaling as blade servers were added versus the performance degradation observed in the Cisco environment.
A First Look at HPE Synergy Hardware
HPE introduced a new modular architecture in January called HPE Synergy – a new platform designed for composable infrastructure (read about this from Forbes here.) For this post, I’ll be focusing on the hardware components only with hopes of writing something up on the software piece in the future.
Dell Releases HTML5 and Redfish Support for iDRAC
With the launch of the new Intel CPUs, today Dell released the newest update of their iDRAC (integrated Dell Remote Access Controller) software which includes support for HTML5 (in other words, no more JAVA!!) Continue reading
Intel Releases Broadwell CPUs for Servers
Intel officially launched the E5-2600 v4 CPU (code name “Broadwell”) today for servers which adds extra cores and faster memory. Today’s release by Intel is not a major architectural CPU change, but instead an enhancement to their existing CPU offering. This means you probably won’t see any “new” servers released, but you will have new CPUs to choose from in the future. Before I go into the details of the E5-2600 v4, I want to take a second and help you understand Intel’s CPU strategy. Continue reading
Dell’s VRTX Gains New Storage Option
As I speak with customers about the Dell PowerEdge VRTX, one of the limits that often gets brought up is the fact that it”only” has 25 x 2.5″ or 12 x 3.5″ drive bays. That is no longer the case. In a quiet release in December, Dell began offering an extra option for VRTX which allows the chassis to connect with up to 2 x external MD storage arrays and share the storage with all servers.
5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Dell Blade Servers
Recently I’ve had to do a lot of “why Dell” presentations and it occurred to me there are a few things about Dell blade servers that many people, including Dell customers, may not know about.
Dell vs Cisco – New Tolly Report (updated)
UPDATED – Tolly Enterprises recently published a new Tolly Report comparing Dell PowerEdge FX2 with Cisco UCS showing results favoring Dell. The 17 page document provides background on each of the product architectures and tests them in four test cases. Continue reading
2015 in Review
As another year has ended, I have to take the time to thank you. This blog was created for my own use, to be able to access blade information at any time; but it grew into something bigger. For each of you that use this site, I give a sincere thank you. This site is a personal site that I’ve maintained since Fall of 2009 and I get ZERO money to run it. No advertising dollars or anything. It’s a hobby, so your participation is greatly appreciated. That said, I thought for my first blog post of 2016, I’d provide you with some insight into the numbers. So here we go.
IDC Worldwide Server Tracker Shows 5.1% Growth in Q3 2015
IDC published their Q3 2015 findings last week, and the results were overall positive. In year over year revenues, the worldwide server market saw revenues increase of 5.1%, or $13.4 billion, the sixth consecutive quarter of growth while shipments grew 4.5%, or 2.49 million units. Specific to blade servers, IDC reported Dell’s blade server revenue grew faster than that of any of the top 5 vendors at 34.8%, however Cisco remained at the #2 blade server market share holder behind HP. Continue reading
Favorite Blade Server Website Links
With the split of HP and HPE, here is a list of updated blade-related websites that may help you find more information about blade servers. Since vendors tend to move their sites without notice if you find a dead link, please let me know. Continue reading