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.
Author Archives: Kevin Houston
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.
What Is a Blade Server?
My friend, Stephen Foskett, is writing a series of posts introducing blade servers. It’s probably something I should have done a long time ago, but since I’m a slacker and he beat me to it, I’ll give him kudos and do a re-post. I encourage you to read the full article as it’s very enlightening. Here is an excerpt:
“I’ve been watching enterprise IT for over 20 years now, and I’ve seen some radical changes. In the server space, one of the biggest shifts was the form factor of the servers: From tower to rack-mount to blades. But what makes a blade server anyway? Let’s consider this for a moment, as we watch another shift in progress. Blade servers are easily recognized in the data centers, trade shows, and product catalogs of today: They’re the ones that nestle together in an enclosure, sharing some resources rather than standing on their own in a rack or on the floor. But what is the essential element that separates a blade from any other kind of server?”
Read the rest at http://blog.fosketts.net/2012/02/18/blade-server/
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.
Cisco To Launch Next Generation UCS Blade Servers on March 6, 2012
According to a recent event posting by Cisco, the 3rd generation of Cisco UCS blade servers will be revealed on March 6, 2012. The server launch event advertises that Cisco will announce the B200 M3 blade server, and C220 M3, and C240 M3 rack servers on March 6th, 2012. These soon-to-be-announced servers are 2 socket servers built on Intel’s upcoming E5-2600 Romley processors and Patsburg chipsets.
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.
Cisco Announces Field Replacement of B440 Blade Servers
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 to complete board failure. According to Cisco.com, Cisco is directly contacting UCS B440 Blade Server customers and will replace UCS B440 Blade Servers currently deployed at customer sites. Cisco is making UCS B440 Blade Server hardware modifications, and a hardware replacement program has been launched.
To identify the affected systems and any available workaround, please visit the Cisco Field Notice at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/ts/fn/634/fn63430.html
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.
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