Making blade servers simple
Posted in IBM on Mar 4th, 2010
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 [...]
Posted in IBM on Jan 6th, 2010
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 [...]
Posted in IBM on Oct 22nd, 2009
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 [...]
Posted in IBM on Oct 20th, 2009
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 [...]
Posted in IBM on Oct 19th, 2009
<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 [...]
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 [...]
Posted in IBM on Sep 28th, 2009
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 [...]
Posted in Server Comparisons on Sep 23rd, 2009
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 [...]
I'm a technology fanatic who has been working in server platform infrastructure since 1997. I'm certified in HP, Dell and IBM Blade Servers as well as VMware and Citrix.You can contact me at:
LinkedIn: Kevin Houston
Twitter: Kevin_Houston
Email: bladesmadesimple AT gmail DOT com
