Tag Archives: PowerEdge

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

5 Modes of the Dell FN IO Module

Dell FN IO Module for FX2 ChassisDell’s FN I/O Modules (FN IOMs) are integrated devices that sit in the rear of the FX2 chassis and behave like traditional network switches.  The FN IOMs provide 8 x 10GbE internal ports to the connected server nodes while offering 4 x 10GbE external links for upstream connectivity.  What makes the FN I/O Module unique is that it supports 5 operational modes: Standalone (SMUX), VLT, Stacking, Programmable MUX (PMUX) and Full-switch.  Below are details on each of these modes.

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A First Look at the Dell PowerEdge M630

The PowerEdge M630, Dell’s newest blade server based on the Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 was announced today.  Although specifics haven’t been officially posted on Dell’s website, a video releasing some highlights of the newest member to the PowerEdge family was found on YouTube by Gartner Analyst,  @Daniel_Bowers, so here is a quick look at it.

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Why Dell’s PowerEdge VRTX is Ideal for Virtualization

I recently had a customer looking for 32 Ethernet ports on a 4 server system to drive a virtualization platform.  At 8 x 1GbE per compute node, this was a typical VMware virtualization platform (they had not moved to 10GbE yet) but it’s not an easy task to perform on blade servers – however the Dell PowerEdge VRTX is an ideal platform, especially for remote locations. Continue reading

A Detailed Look at Dell PowerEdge VRTX

PowerEdge VRTX - Front View with 2.5 DrivesWhat happens when you merge rack servers with blade servers? You get the newly announced Dell PowerEdge VRTX. Three years in the making, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX (pronounced “ver-tex”) is advertised as a revolutionary, easy-to-manage office-optimized data center that converges servers, storage and networking into a compact package. In the following post, I’ll give you a deep-dive look into the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution.

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An Introduction to Dell PowerEdge VRTX

An Introduction to Dell PowerEdge VRTX

Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com.  He has over 15 years of experience in the x86 server marketplace.  Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization.  Kevin works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global Enterprise market.

Disclaimer: The views presented in this blog are personal views and may or may not reflect any of the contributors’ employer’s positions. Furthermore, the content is not reviewed, approved or published by any employer.

Dell’s PowerEdge M620 Blade Server Offering Up to 768GB RAM

(UPDATED 3/7/12) With the launch of Intel’s Xeon E5-2600 processor, Dell revealed the details of the new PowerEdge M620 blade server.  Offering an industry first 24 memory DIMMs in a half-height form factor, the M620 offers up to 768GB of RAM along side the newly announced Intel E5-2600.  The Dell PowerEdge M620 also comes with the ability to chose from a variety of LOM (LAN on Motherboard) cards – a feature first seen in the PowerEdge M710HD and M915 last Summer.  Formerly known as the Network Daughter Card, the newly renamed feature, called Select Network Adapter, is a removable network card that gives buyers the option of choosing from Broadcom, Intel or QLogic adapters – each offering up to two ports of 10Gb.  Since it is removable, it offers investment protection as new technology becomes available.  For more features and details about the M620, see below.

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