Author Archives: Kevin Houston

About Kevin Houston

Founder of BladesMadeSimple.com. Blade server evangelist.

Cisco UCS vs HP Virtual Connect

My friend, M. Sean McGee, wrote up a great blog post in April that deserves revisiting titled, “The State of Statelessness: Cisco UCS vs. HP Virtual Connect“.  In the write-up, he discusses Cisco how Unified Computing System (UCS) blade servers are “stateless” and use “UCS Service Profiles”.  He identifies 96 server settings that can be handled via the UCS Service Profile vs 12 server settings with HP’s Virtual Connect Server Profile.  It is a great read, so I encourage you to take a few minutes and see if you agree with what he writes.

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Brocade FCoE Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter

Brocade Converged 10GbE Switch for IBM BladeCenterIBM recently announced the addition of a Brocade Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switch module for the IBM BladeCenter designed to deliver up to 24% savings over traditional 10Gb Ethernet & 8Gb FC setup. 

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Blade Server Q&A

I’ve been getting some questions via email and I’ve seen some questions being asked in my LinkedIn group, “Blade Server Technologies” so I thought I’d take a few minutes in today’s post to answer these questions, as well as get your feedback.  Feel free to post your thoughts on these questions in the comments below. Continue reading →

IBM to Acquire BLADE Network Technologies

IBM announced on Sept. 27, 2010 that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE), a privately held company based in Santa Clara, CA. BLADE specializes in software and devices that route data and transactions to and from servers. The acquisition is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter of 2010, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions and applicable regulatory reviews. Financial terms were not disclosed.

To read the full press release, continue reading.

REVISED HP Loses Blade Market Share in Q2

Revised 9/29/2010 – I previously titled this blog post, “HP Loses Blade Server Market Share to IBM…” however I have since re-thought that statement. The report from IDC does not specify where HP’s blade server market share went from Q1 2010 – it only provides Q2 2010 market share numbers. I regret any confusion I may have caused.
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One Stop Shop for Blade Server Links

I continuously find myself re-visiting the same links to find additional information regarding blade servers, so I finally came up with a revolution: why not consolidate the links and put them on my site?    Introducing a new addition to my blog – the “Helpful Links” page.  Located at the top of every page, the Helpful Links page is designed to be a single stop shop for the best links related to blade servers.  My goal is to continue to update this page, so if you have links you want to see, or if something is broken, please let me know.  This is YOUR site.  I built this site for you, so in the words of Jerry Maguire, “Help me, help you.”    Thanks for your continued support.

Go to Helpful Links Section »

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New Study Shows Dell M1000e Chassis Most Power Efficient Chassis

A white paper released today by Dell shows that the Dell M1000e blade chassis infrastructure offers significant power savings compared to equivalent HP and IBM blade environments. In fact, the results were audited by an outside source, the Enterprise Management Associates (http://www.enterprisemanagement.com). After the controversy with the Tolly Group report discussing HP vs Cisco, I decided to take the time to investigate these findings a bit deeper. Continue reading →

Cisco Announces 32 DIMM, 2 Socket Nehalem EX UCS B230-M1 Blade Server

 Thanks to fellow blogger, M. Sean McGee (http://www.mseanmcgee.com/) I was alerted to the fact that Cisco announced on today, Sept. 14, their 13th blade server to the UCS family – the Cisco UCS B230 M1. 

This newest addition performs a few tricks that no other vendor has been able to perform. Continue reading →

VMworld 2010: Up Close and Personal with HP and Dell Blades

Last week at VMworld 2010 I had the opportunity to get some great pictures of HP and Dell’s newest blade servers. The HP Proliant BL620 G7, the HP Proliant BL680 G7 and the Dell PowerEdge M610X and M710HD.   These newest blade servers are exciting offerings from HP and Dell so I encourage you to take a few minutes to look.    Continue reading →