Dell introduced today a new 40Gb Ethernet Switch module for its Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade system. The Dell Force10 MXL 10/40GbE switch is the first Force10 product introduced to the Dell blade server platform. The Force10 MXL 10/40GbE is a 1/10/40GbE Layer 2 and Layer 3 blade switch and is powered by the Force10 operating system (FTOS).
Yearly Archives: 2012
Cisco Launches UCS B200 M3
On March 8, Cisco launched the UCS B200 M3 blade server. The half-height blade uses processors from Intel’s newly-announced Xeon E5 family, and competes with the Dell M620, HP BL460c Gen8, and IBM HS23 server blades. Continue reading
IBM Announces New Blade Server – HS23
IBM officially announced their new blade, the HS23 blade server, and it comes with some improvement.
Virtualization Performance on Blade Servers
One of the industry-leading independent technology assessment service firms, Principled Technologies, just updated their site with a ton of white papers covering performance on just about any product or technology. You can check out their website at http://www.principledtechnologies.com/default.htm for the complete list, but I wanted to give you the links to their papers that cover virtualization performance on blade servers.
HP Announces Proliant BL460c Gen 8 Blade Server
HP launched the new ProLiant BL460c Gen8 blade but you would have never known about it. With the prelaunch work done it February it seemed like a non event. The bulk of the goodness on the Gen 8 updates are across the ProLiant family so I will try to keep my focus on those that pertain to the BL460c.
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.
Intel Announces Sandy Bridge, aka Xeon E5-2600
Intel announced on Tuesday their next generation of 2 socket CPU – the Intel Xeon E5-2600. Formerly code named, “Sandy Bridge,” the E5-2600 is a follow on to the Intel Xeon 5600 series family and offers a real performance increase. In fact, Intel is boasting performance increases from 43% to 62% (depending on the vendor and benchmark.) What is contributing to this massive increase in performance? Let’s take a look.
IDC Reports Q4 2011 Shows Continued Blade Server Growth
The International Data Corporation’s (IDC) released their Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker today covering Q4 2011. Despite a 7.2% decrease in the worldwide server factory revenue, the blade market continued to experience growth in 4Q11 with factory revenue increasing 8.3% year over year. Other key facts from the IDC press release: Continue reading
Dell Announces New Blade Server – M620
In anticipation of Intel’s upcoming E5-2600 CPU (aka Sandy Bridge) announcement, Dell officially announced the 12th Generation of PowerEdge servers today. Although the specifics of the 12th Generation, or “12G”, servers have not yet been released, it is very clear there will be a new blade server added to the Dell PowerEdge portfolio: the M620.
While Dell.com announcement site does not have a lot of the details of what’s coming in 12G, The Register has been able to secure some good information on the Dell PowerEdge M620 blade server that I’ll share with you.
- The M620’s size is “half-height”allowing you to put up to 16 inside of the Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis.
- It will hold up to 2 x Intel Xeon E5 CPUs
- It will hold up to 768GB of RAM (the same as its tower and rack equivalent)
- The M620 has two hot-plug, 2.5-inch drive bays, and can have SSD, SATA disk, or SAS disk drives slid into those two slots.
- The PERC S110 controller with software raid and the PERC H310, H710, and H710P controllers for internal RAID arrays can snap onto this M620 blade.
- The M620 has two SD cards for redundant embedded hypervisors to sit on.
Of course, there are a few other goodies that The Register didn’t mention – so I’ll hold off talking about until the official Intel announcement.
To read the full article from The Register discussing the next generation of Dell PowerEdge server (including the tower and rack models,) go to http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/27/dell_poweredge_12g_server_launch/
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 Specialist covering the Global 500 East market.
Photo from Dell.com
Where Did Blade Servers Come From?
As I mentioned yesterday, one of my fellow bloggers, Stephen Foskett, is writing a series on blade servers. His latest post reveals the history of the blade server. Stephen’s article challenged me to do some research of my own – and here’s what I found. Apparently the first “official” patent for a server on blade (patent # 6,411,506 – “High density web server chassis system and method) was awarded in June of 2002 to Christopher G. Hipp and David M. Kirkeby of RLX Technologies. One interesting fact is that U.S. Patents referenced within the document refers to other patents from many leaders of the industry including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Micron, Hitachi and even Dell.
I’ve taken the liberty of downloading the entire patent document for your reference:
High Density Web Server Chassis – Patent 6411506 B1 (1.84Mb, PDF).
If you like technology and are a history buff, I recommend you check out Stephen’s article at http://blog.fosketts.net/2012/02/20/blade-server-history/.
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 Specialist covering the Global 500 East market.