Tag Archive

Cisco Announces Field Replacement of B440 Blade Servers

Published on January 30, 2012 By Kevin Houston

Cisco announced on Jan. 26, 2012 a field replacement program for Cisco UCS B440 Blade Servers.  Cisco Field Notice FN – 63430 describes the problem as a failure of a MOSFET, or Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor, power transistor on the blade server that can cause the component to overheat and emit a short flash which could lead [...]

Cisco Finally Releases UCS Market Share Numbers

Published on May 24, 2011 By Kevin Houston

May 24, 2011  - IDC came out with their 1Q 2011 worldwide server market revenue report today showing that Cisco has finally entered the market standings with a 3rd place standing at 9.4% factory revenue share .  IDC’s findings also showed that both HP and IBM decreased their blade server market share from Q4 2010.

HP’s New 32GB DIMMs Too Expensive?

Published on January 13, 2011 By Kevin Houston

A reader recently commented on my article about HP’s new 32GB DIMM, “At $8039 per DIMM, HP can support 384GB in a BL460c at the cost of $96,000 per server just for the memory! If you filled just one rack with these servers, you would spend $6 million just for the memory. And the memory [...]

Cisco UCS Considered One of Top 10 Data Center Trends for 2011

Published on January 13, 2011 By Kevin Houston

A recent article by SearchDataCenter.com titled Top Ten Data Center Trends of 2011, predicts that Cisco UCS blade servers will grab mega market share and inspires more converged infrastructure products.

Cisco Releases UCS Firmware 1.4

Published on January 3, 2011 By Kevin Houston

As I’m sure most of you already know, Cisco has released an anticipated update to the firmware for UCS.  Of the dozens of enhancements that were added or modified, perhaps one of the most interesting is Cisco’s integration of their rack-based “C-Series” line into the UCS Platform.  This provides users with a single interface to [...]

Still Confused About Cisco’s Blade Market Share

Published on November 22, 2010 By Kevin Houston

I recently received a comment  on my previous post concerning Cisco’s market share (“What’s the Truth About Cisco’s Market Share“) which has me more confused.  The comment admits that Cisco has not released any market share data to IDC, but that when you look at the Cisco Q1 2010 Earnings Call and compare it to [...]

A Post from the Archive: “Cisco UCS vs IBM BladeCenter H”

Published on November 2, 2010 By Kevin Houston

It’s always fun to take a look at the past, so today I wanted to revisit my very first blog post.  Titled, “Cisco UCS vs IBM BladeCenter H”, I focused on trying to compare Cisco’s blade technology with IBM’s.  Was I successful or not – it’s up to you to decide.  This article ranks at [...]

Cisco UCS vs HP Virtual Connect

Published on October 28, 2010 By Kevin Houston

My friend, M. Sean McGee, wrote up a great blog post in April that deserves revisiting titled, “The State of Statelessness: Cisco UCS vs. HP Virtual Connect“.  In the write-up, he discusses Cisco how Unified Computing System (UCS) blade servers are “stateless” and use “UCS Service Profiles”.  He identifies 96 server settings that can be [...]

What is the Truth About Cisco’s Blade Server Market Share?

Published on October 19, 2010 By Kevin Houston

What is Cisco’s blade server market share?  That seems to be the mystery question that no one can really answer.  The previous IDC quarterly worldwide server report mentioned nothing about Cisco, yet readers and bloggers alike claim Cisco is #3, so what IS the true answer? 

Blade Server Q&A

Published on September 30, 2010 By Kevin Houston

Who rules the blade server world? IBM? Dell? HP? Cisco? Tell us what you think.