Author Archives: Kevin Houston

About Kevin Houston

Founder of BladesMadeSimple.com. Blade server evangelist.

Cisco UCS XE9305 — Blade Servers Designed for the Modern Edge

Cisco has expanded its blade server lineup with a new platform built specifically for edge environments, where space, power, and simplicity matter. Launched in November 2025, the Cisco UCS XE9305 Chassis and UCS XE130c M8 Compute Node form the backbone of the Cisco Unified Edge solution — a modular, AI-ready, cloud-managed system that brings compute, networking, storage, and security together in a compact blade form factor.

In this post, we’ll break down what this offering is all about and share the key technical details. Continue reading →

Xeon 6 CPUs Available Today

I thought it would be interesting to take a quick glance at the latest Intel CPU availability across the current blade server market. The results were quite interesting. Continue reading →

Taking a Look at the Newest Blade Server Offerings

I’ll admit—I’ve been holding off on writing about the latest blade server offerings. I wanted to give all the major server vendors time to announce and start shipping their new models. But now that the dust has settled, I’m genuinely surprised by what I’ve found. Continue reading →

Intel Xeon CPUs by Blade Server Vendor

The list below is based upon the list of CPUs that each server vendor posts on their respective websites. Please note, in certain cases there may be options to add Intel Xeon CPUs that are not listed in the matrix below via a custom process; check with your server vendors if something is not listed. Continue reading →

IDC Data Shows Blade Server Shipments Trending Down

I was asked about the trends of blade servers recently, so I took the time to take a look at IDC data and the results were quite shocking. Continue reading →

I Heard A Rumor About Cisco UCS

Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged (apologies) but I have a juicy rumor about Cisco’s blade servers that I think you’ll want to hear. Continue reading →

First Look at Cisco’s AMD Blade Server

This week at Cisco Live, Cisco unveiled their first blade server built with an AMD processor. Here is a first look at it. Continue reading →

Available 4th Gen Intel Xeon CPUs by Blade Server Vendor

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything new. This is partly because blade server news has practically diminished; or I’m just getting really bad at finding “blog-worthy” content. Either way, in this post, I thought it would be helpful to take to post a comparison of CPUs by blade server vendor. Continue reading →

Dell PowerEdge MX Networking Deployment Guide

This document is an overview of the architecture, features, and functionality of the PowerEdge MX networking infrastructure, including the steps for configuring and troubleshooting the PowerEdge MX networking switches in Full Switch and SmartFabric modes. Continue reading →

Dell PowerEdge MX with Cisco ACI Integration

A few weeks ago, there was a Dell blog post that provided an example of how to integrate Dell’s blade server platform running Dell’s SmartFabric Services with Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI.) Here are some of the key takeaways from that blog post. Continue reading →

Blades Made Simple

All things blade servers. Making blade servers simple since 2009.