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IBM Offers FREE Blade Chassis Through December (No Purchase Required)

Published on July 13, 2011 By Kevin Houston

IBM once again is promoting is striving to increase market share by offering customers the chance to get a “free” IBM BladeCenter chassis.   The last time they promoted a free chassis was in November, so this year they kicked in the promo effective July 5, 2011.  The promotion is for a free chassis – without any purchase, however [...]

IBM Blades on the Battlefield

Published on January 5, 2011 By Kevin Houston

You have probably heard of IBM’s ruggedized BladeCenter offering, the BladeCenter T and HT but did you know there was another IBM blade server offering that meets MIL-SPEC requirements that is not sold by IBM? 

Virtual I/O on IBM BladeCenter (IBM Virtual Fabric Adapter by Emulex)

Published on March 4, 2010 By Kevin Houston

A few weeks ago, IBM and Emulex announced a new blade server adapter for the IBM BladeCenter and IBM System x line, called the “Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter for IBM BladeCenter" (IBM part # 49Y4235). Frequent readers may recall that I had a "so what" attitude when I blogged about it in October and that [...]

IBM BladeCenter Rumours

Published on January 6, 2010 By Kevin Houston

I recently heard some rumours about IBM’s BladeCenter products that I thought I would share – but FIRST let me be clear:  this is purely speculation, I have no definitive information from IBM so this may be false info, but my source is pretty credible, so… 4 Socket Nehalem EX Blade I posted a few weeks [...]

IBM BladeCenter HS22 Delivers Best SPECweb2005 Score Ever Achieved by a Blade Server

Published on October 22, 2009 By Kevin Houston

According to IBM’s System x and BladeCenter x86 Server Blog, the IBM BladeCenter HS22 server has posted the best SPECweb2005 score ever from a blade server.  With a SPECweb2005 supermetric score of 75,155, IBM has reached a benchmark seen by no other blade yet to-date.  The SPECweb2005 benchmark is designed to be a neutral, equal benchmark [...]

IBM Announces Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter for BladeCenter…So?

Published on October 20, 2009 By Kevin Houston

Emulex and IBM announced today the availability of a new Emulex expansion card for blade servers that allows for up to 8 virtual nics to be assigned for each physical NIC.  The “Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter for IBM BladeCenter (IBM part # 49Y4235)” is a CFF-H expansion card is based on industry-standard PCIe architecture and can [...]

REVEALED: IBM's Nexus 4000 Switch: 4001I (Updated)

Published on October 19, 2009 By Kevin Houston

<see updates at bottom> Finally – information on the soon-to-be-released Cisco Nexus 4000 switch for IBM BladeCenter.  Apparently IBM is officially calling their version “Cisco Nexus Switch Module 4001I for the IBM BladeCenter.”  I’m not sure if it’s “officially” announced yet, but I’ve uncovered some details.  Here is a summary of the Cisco Nexus Switch Module 4001I [...]

How IBM's BladeCenter works with Cisco Nexus 5000

Published on October 1, 2009 By Kevin Houston

Cisco Nexus 4000 switch for blade chassis environments, I thought it would be good to discuss how IBM is able to connect blade servers via 10Gb Datacenter Ethernet (or Converged Enhanced Ethernet) to a Cisco Nexus 5000. Other than Cisco’s UCS offering, IBM is currently the only blade vendor who offers a Converged Network Adapter (CNA) for the [...]

IBM Announces 4 Socket Intel Blade Server-UPDATED

Published on September 28, 2009 By Kevin Houston

IBM announced last week they will be launching a new blade server modeled with the upcoming 4 socket Intel Nehalem EX.  While details have not yet been provided on this new server, I wanted to provide an estimation of what this server could look like, based on previous IBM models.  I’ve drawn up what I think [...]

Cisco UCS vs IBM BladeCenter H

Published on September 23, 2009 By Kevin Houston

News Flash: Cisco is now selling servers! Okay – perhaps this isn’t news anymore, but the reality is Cisco has been getting a lot of press lately – from their overwhelming presence at VMworld 2009 to their ongoing cat fight with HP.  Since I work for a Solutions Provider that sells HP, IBM and now [...]