Last week, Dell EMC announced extended life for the PowerEdge VRTX. The announcement stated that Dell EMC would be offering VRTX through the end of 2022. The PowerEdge VRTX is considered a “datacenter in a box” with up to 4 blade servers and 25 hot-pluggable shared drives inside of a tower or 5U system. Continue reading
Cisco Next Gen UCS Rumors
As we enter the next decade, rumors of Cisco’s next generation UCS are surfacing. Whether or not they are true, there is no doubt that the original generation of Cisco’s blade server design is long overdue for a major overhaul – and we may see the replacement this year. So let’s take a look at what’s being said in the gossip mill. Continue reading
2019 – Year in Review
As we wrap up this decade, I wanted to take the time to say thank you. While I created this blog to help me create a repository of blade server information, this blog has grown to provide (hopefully) valuable information to you. In reality, without you I wouldn’t have a reason to continue writing on this blog– so thank you! As you may know, this blog is my personal hobby. I do not seek nor receive outside funds to help with the costs, I do it for enjoyment. My biggest challenge continues to coming up with content that is not specific to one vendor. As we move into the new year, I hope you will reach out to me if you come up with ideas of blade server topics you’d like to see. Enough of this – let’s take a look at what was hot in 2019.
Dell EMC Launches Something New, But Don’t Refer to It as AI
Earlier this month Dell EMC unveiled their newest solution of products that combines all of their core products into one system known as PowerOne. This new system will be fully-engineered and highly-automated with autonomous operations and flexible consumption options and is being positioned as “Autonomous Infrastructure” – but don’t call it AI. If you haven’t heard of Autonomous Infrastructure before, it’s because it’s a new category for products that are beyond Converged Infrastructure. The Dell EMC PowerOne combines PowerEdge MX blade servers with PowerMax storage and connects it via Dell EMC Networking while protecting it with Dell EMC Data Protection. I’ll go more into the components at the end of this post, but first I want to focus on what makes PowerOne unique – the automation. Continue reading
GPU Options for Today’s Blade Servers
In the past, a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) was equated to a workload that was designing something, like building automobiles. However, over the past two or three years, organizations have realized that GPUs have more value than utilization in Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML). In fact, a large majority of GPU adoption revolves around utilization of GPUs with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Organizations have realized that VDI running Windows 10 can benefit from GPUs, so GPUs are now becoming a requirement for VDI. As we look at a “modular infrastructure” (aka blade server) environment, having multiple servers within a small footprint is ideal for VDI. Therefore, in today’s blog post, I’m going to review what each blade server vendor offers for GPU options. Continue reading
BladesMadeSimple Turns 10
Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of BladesMadeSimple.com and it’s been a great decade. Let me walk you back through time and give you some insights as to why this blog was created and what it has accomplished. Continue reading
A Little Known Secret About Dell EMC Servers That You Should Know
There is a little known secret about Dell EMC servers that you should know. It’s something that is been available on every server since day one yet most people, even Dell EMC employees, don’t know… Continue reading
Blade Server Comparison – August 2019
Below is an updated chart to help guide you to the best blade server for your project. This version includes Intel DC Persistent Memory (Optane).
Overview of the Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect
Earlier this year Cisco announced and has begun shipping the Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect (FI). The Cisco UCS 6454 offers line-rate, low-latency, lossless 10/25/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and Fibre Channel functions. In this blog post I provide an overview of what you can expect in this fourth generation FI and provide some things you need to be aware of before migrating. Continue reading
Top 5 Reasons Why You Need Intel’s 2nd Generation Xeon SP Processor
A few weeks ago, Intel launched their 2nd generation of Intel Xeon SP (formerly known as “Cascade Lake”.) There are some very important reasons you need to purchase your next blade servers with this CPU. Continue reading