Today IBM announced two new blade servers using Intel Xeon E5-2400 (Sandy Bridge-EN) processors. Continue reading
Author Archives: Kevin Houston
Dell Announces 3 New Blade Servers–M820, M520 and M420
Today, Dell announced the addition of 3 new blade servers to its PowerEdge portfolio – the PowerEdge M820, PowerEdge M520 and the PowerEdge M420. Each server offers a unique addition to the Dell blade server family and will be available soon.
Test Report: Power Efficiency Comparison of Dell and Cisco High Memory Capacity Blade Servers
Dell recently published a new whitepaper that compares the performance and power efficiency of four of the Dell PowerEdge M710HD and M620 blades vs. four of the Cisco B250 M2 blade servers. Here is a summary of the key findings:
Dell Announces 40Gb Blade Server Switch: Dell Force10 MXL 10/40GbE
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).
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
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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.