IDC published their Q3 2015 findings last week, and the results were overall positive. In year over year revenues, the worldwide server market saw revenues increase of 5.1%, or $13.4 billion, the sixth consecutive quarter of growth while shipments grew 4.5%, or 2.49 million units. Specific to blade servers, IDC reported Dell’s blade server revenue grew faster than that of any of the top 5 vendors at 34.8%, however Cisco remained at the #2 blade server market share holder behind HP. Continue reading
Author Archives: Kevin Houston
Favorite Blade Server Website Links
With the split of HP and HPE, here is a list of updated blade-related websites that may help you find more information about blade servers. Since vendors tend to move their sites without notice if you find a dead link, please let me know. Continue reading
HP Introduces M.2 SSDs for Blade Servers
HP recently announced the industry’s first M.2 SSD for blade servers. If you’re not familiar with M.2 (pronounced M dot 2), it’s a small form factor card and connector supporting applications such as Wi-Fi, WWAN, USB, PCIe & SATA seen mostly in desktop / laptop systems. Adoption of this form factor in Tier 1 vendors is slow coming, which is why this is a big announcement for HP. Since this plugs into the system board, it avoids traversing the SAS mid-plane and allows for connectivity to the system PCIe bus supporting faster speeds (see below for details.) Continue reading
5 Modes of the Dell FN IO Module
Dell’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.
How To Back Up the Dell FlexAddress
If you own a Dell blade chassis, you are probably familiar with the FlexAddress feature however you have probably not wondered how to back it up – something that is well documented. Fortunately a few of my Dell peers have put together the steps for a definitive backup method.
IDC Reports Rising Blade Market Share in 2Q15
IDC released their Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker yesterday and reported an overall 6.1% year over year (YoY) growth in servers. IDC had very little mentions about blade server market but reported the following: Continue reading
Websites You Need to Bookmark
One of my ongoing goals with this blog is to be a site for all things blade servers however it can be challenging for me to provide all of the information you may need. Because of this, I created a page dedicated to providing you with a list of helpful websites that you will want to bookmark. Continue reading
Dell MXL Blade Switch Configuration with Explanations
We go through a lot to train our teams on how to configure blade switches however it can be difficult for one to remember everything that a Dell Network Sales Engineer has taught them. As an administrator, you often need to be able to look at an actual configuration in front of you and have each line explained to you in as much detail as is reasonable or “necessary.” Continue reading
Dell Blade Chassis I/O Module Guide
If you are looking for the I/O Connectivity Options for the Dell PowerEdge M1000e Blade Enclosure, look no further. Continue reading
Blade Server Comparison – June 2015
Below is the chart for the newest 4 socket blade servers based on the Intel Xeon E5-4600 v3.