It occurred to me that I created a reference chart for showing what blade server options are available in the market (“Blade Server Comparison – 2018“) but I’ve never listed the options for blade server chassis. In this post, I’ll provide you with overviews of blade chassis from Cisco, Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo. One of the things I’m not going to do is try and give Pro’s and Con’s for each chassis. The reason is quite obvious if you have read this blog before, but in a nutshell, I work for Dell EMC, so I’m not going to promote or bash any vendor. My goal is to simplify each vendor’s offerings and give you one place to get an overview of each blade chassis in the market.
Category Archives: Cisco
UCS vs PowerEdge MX – Comparison of Admin Tasks
Principled Technologies released a report earlier this month that compared certain administrative tasks between a Cisco UCS blade server solution and a Dell EMC PowerEdge MX solution and the results were quite surprising. Continue reading
Blade Server Comparison – September 2018
With the recent release of the Dell EMC PowerEdge MX blade servers, I realized it’s been a year since I’ve updated my blade server comparison chart. Below is an updated chart to help guide you to the best blade server for your project. (REVISED December 2018 – fixed drive count on Dell EMC PowerEdge MX servers. Thanks to Mike Browning for catching it after this many months!)
New Study Compares Networking Capabilities of Blade Server Solutions
An independent testing company, Principled Technologies, recently released a study that compared the networking capabilities of Dell EMC PowerEdge MX, HPE Synergy and Cisco UCS using VMware vMotion. Their findings:
Blade Server Options for VMware vSAN ReadyNode
Last July I wrote a blog article showcasing the limited options listed on VMware’s vSAN ReadyNode listing. Over the past 14 months, that list has grown so instead of updating that older post, I thought I’d provide a consolidated updated list of vSAN ReadyNode blade servers.
Blade Server Comparison – September 2017
With the recent release of the Intel Xeon SP CPUs, I realized it’s been a year since I’ve updated my blade server comparison chart. Below is an updated chart to help guide you to the best blade server for your project.
Cisco Announces New Blade Servers
Cisco announced the UCS B200 M5 and UCS B480 M5 blade servers each supporting the newly announced Intel Xeon Scalable Processor. Below are the highlights of each model. Continue reading
Integrating Dell Blade Servers into Cisco Nexus Environments
I recently had some discussions with a customer looking to connect a Dell EMC PowerEdge M1000e to a Cisco Nexus and I was quite surprised at the number of resources available to assist in the project. Below you will find links to the documents I found with the hope it will help you out in the near future.
Cisco Blade Servers Enter vSAN Market
Last month, VMware announced a new vSAN Ready Node using the Cisco UCS B-Series blade server. Blade servers aren’t new to vSAN Ready Nodes (see “VMware Virtual SAN Ready Node on a Blade Server“) and Cisco isn’t new to the vSAN business – they’ve had their UCS C-Series rack servers certified since “Ready Nodes” were announced, so why is this announcement interesting? It’s because it is the first vSAN node that only includes 2 drives. Continue reading
Blades vs Rack Mount -a podcast
In June of 2011, I had the pleasure of joining Nigel Poulton, Rick Vanover and Bob Plankers on the podcast, “InfoSmack Deep Dive” to talk about blade servers versus rack servers. In the 47 minute discussion we talked over the pros and cons of both types of server platform. I recently found a copy of the podcast in my Dropbox, so I listened to it and was shocked to hear that many of the same arguments and counter-points we reviewed almost 6 years ago still applies with servers today. If you are curious as to whether blade servers or rack servers are ideal for you, I encourage you to take some time and listen to this podcast.
Special thanks to:
Nigel Poulton (@NigelPoulton, http://blog.nigelpoulton.com/)
Rick Vanover (@RickVanover, rickvanover.com)
Bob Plankers (@Plankers, https://lonesysadmin.net/)
Podcast download: https://bladesmadesimple.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/infosmack_deep_dive_podcast_104.mp3
Listen here:
Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com. He has 20 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 has worked at Dell EMC as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global Enterprise market since August 2011 and currently works as a Technical Architect supporting the Central Region.
Disclaimer: The views presented in this blog are personal views and may or may not reflect any of the contributors’ employer’s positions. Furthermore, the content is not reviewed, approved or published by any employer.