This document is an overview of the architecture, features, and functionality of the PowerEdge MX networking infrastructure, including the steps for configuring and troubleshooting the PowerEdge MX networking switches in Full Switch and SmartFabric modes. Read the full deployment guide here.
Category Archives: Dell – Dell EMC
Dell PowerEdge MX with Cisco ACI Integration
A few weeks ago, there was a Dell blog post that provided an example of how to integrate Dell’s blade server platform running Dell’s SmartFabric Services with Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI.) Here are some of the key takeaways from that blog post. Continue reading
Details of Network Partitioning on Dell PowerEdge Blade Servers
Network interface card partitioning (NPAR) allows users to minimize the implementation of physical Network interface cards (NICs) and separates Local Area Network (LAN) and Storage Area Network (SAN) connections. NPAR improves bandwidth allocation, network traffic management, and utilization in virtualized and non-virtualized network environments. The number of physical servers may be fewer, but the demand for the NIC ports is more. This blog describes how to validate, enable, and configure NPAR on a Dell PowerEdge MX Platform through the server System Setup and the MX compute sled Server Templates within Dell Open Manage Enterprise – Modular (OME-M). Read the full blog here.
Dell Adds 100GbE Solution to the MX7000 Blade Server Platform
Dell has introduced two new products to enable 100GbE networking on the PowerEdge MX7000 blade server platform. These new additions will provide up to 400GbE per MX750c or MX760c blade server. Continue reading
What Would You Do if You Had Access to a Casino’s Datacenter?
I recently was reminded of the time I was left alone in a casino’s datacenter. It’s been nearly 13 years, so I thought I’d repost the article in its entirety. Enjoy. Continue reading
Backing Up the Dell PowerEdge MX7000 Settings and Configurations
As anyone knows, having a functional backup (and recovery) plan for your datacenter is vital to insuring data protection. While data protection of servers is a basic need, what about the infrastructure that supports it? In the blade server world, the infrastructure is the chassis, management and switches. In this post, I’ll discuss best practices for backing up the settings and configurations of the Dell PowerEdge MX7000 infrastructure. Continue reading
Dell Announces PowerEdge MX760c Blade Server
Today Dell Technologies announced the next generation of the PowerEdge blade server – the PowerEdge MX760c. In this blog post, I’ll highlight the details of this new blade server.
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Looking for vSAN Ready Nodes that Run vSAN 8 – Your Choices Are Limited
Now that VMware has released vSphere 8.0, I thought it would be interesting to gather up all of the blade servers that are certified as “vSphere Ready Nodes.” The results were quite shocking. Continue reading
The Ultimate Guide for Blade Server Resources
Happy Halloween! As new blade server content is lacking in the market, I thought I would wrap up this month with an updated list of blade server resources for Cisco, Dell, HPE and Lenovo blade servers.
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An Updated Way to Get GPUs on Dell PowerEdge MX7000
It should be no surprise that the popularity of accelerators in the datacenter continues to grow. In years past, I’ve written a few blog posts on the GPU options for blade servers, but at that time, the options were limited to either small GPUs like the NVIDIA T4 or mezzanine based GPUs. Now the solutions that are available really open up some great options of using GPUs on blade servers. Dell Technologies and Liqid have worked together to provide a way to provide multiple GPUs to blade servers using concepts that we won’t see in the market for another few years, so take a few minutes to learn more. Continue reading