Not long ago it was reported that IBM was having a promotion to receive a free blade enclosure if you are a first time customer and the chassis in question is eligible. Details can be found in the following links: Continue reading
Author Archives: Kevin Houston
A New Look
If you are wondering what is new about BladesMadeSimple.com besides my recent announcement – the answer is the site’s look. Hopefully you will find the new look easier to navigate than the previous theme, but if you find any issues, please let me know at bladesmadesimple AT gmail.com.
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Change is Coming
Change is coming to BladesMadeSimple.com. I created this site out of my passion for the blade server technology in late 2009. Over the years, I have worked toward creating a site that can be a repository for blade server news and information. The site has been my hobby and I have put hours of effort into creating content without receiving a single penny from outside advertising (although I have been on several invitation-only blogger events.) One of the things I worked hard for was to be a neutral voice, not leaning toward any one hardware vendor, but that’s where the change is coming. Continue reading
Will the New VMware vSphere 5 Licensing Affect Blade Vendors? (PART 2)
Since my last post, I heard lots of rumors that VMware would make some changes in their new licensing model. Well, this week VMware made an official announcement of changes and posted here.
VMware made very clear that all the changes were motivated by the feedbacks they have received: Continue reading
A Look at Intel’s Cloud Builders Initiative
In case you haven’t heard, “cloud” discussions are here to stay and everyone has their own recommendations for you to start building your cloud environment, but which is best for you? Intel has created the “Intel® Cloud Builders” program aimed at making it easier for you to build, enhance and operate cloud infrastructure.
Another Free Chassis Offering – Is Cisco Driving These Offers?
I was recently on one of those calls from HP “checking in”. If you are an HP customer you may know these calls start off with something like “We know you spent money on HP last quarter so how many people from this company will have to pester you until you buy more stuff from us?” One of the things the HP rep mentioned towards the end the process, however, is that until October HP is now offering a free blade enclosure with the purchase of four HP BL460’s. Continue reading
Best Practices for Power and Cooling Blades
One of the biggest challenges related to blade servers in an existing data center is how to power and cool. APC wrote a white paper (link below) that explains how to asses the options to best power and cool your blade environment.
Will the New VMware vSphere 5 Licensing Affect Blade Vendors?
As you no doubt heard by now, VMware has announced a new version of vSphere along with some new or improved features however, this post will not highlight these features. In this post, I want to talk about what did not improve – the licensing. Continue reading
Blade Chassis I/O Diagrams
Many people get confused as to why so many I/O modules are needed within a given blade chassis. The basic concept is simple (in most cases) – for each port you need on a given blade server, you need to have a corresponding I/O module. For example, if you need 4 NICs, you’re going to need 4 Ethernet modules (in most cases.) In today’s post, I thought I would keep it simple and publish the I/O diagrams of Cisco, Dell, HP and IBM chassis. Of course, I am human and “have been known to make mistakes – from time to time” so please feel free to correct me on any errors you see. Enjoy.
(Updated 8/3/2011 – fixed Dell M1000e Full Height I/O Diagram)
IBM Offers FREE Blade Chassis Through December (No Purchase Required)
IBM once again is promoting is striving to increase market share by offering customers the chance to get a “free” IBM BladeCenter chassis. The last time they promoted a free chassis was in November, so this year they kicked in the promo effective July 5, 2011. The promotion is for a free chassis – without any purchase, however a chassis without any blades or switches is just a metal box. Regardless, this promotion is a great way to help offset some of the cost to implementation of your blade server project. Continue reading