With the recent release of the Intel Xeon E5 v4 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. Continue reading
Category Archives: HP-HPE
A First Look at HPE Synergy Hardware
HPE introduced a new modular architecture in January called HPE Synergy – a new platform designed for composable infrastructure (read about this from Forbes here.) For this post, I’ll be focusing on the hardware components only with hopes of writing something up on the software piece in the future.
5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Dell Blade Servers
Recently I’ve had to do a lot of “why Dell” presentations and it occurred to me there are a few things about Dell blade servers that many people, including Dell customers, may not know about.
IDC Worldwide Server Tracker Shows 5.1% Growth in Q3 2015
IDC published their Q3 2015 findings last week, and the results were overall positive. In year over year revenues, the worldwide server market saw revenues increase of 5.1%, or $13.4 billion, the sixth consecutive quarter of growth while shipments grew 4.5%, or 2.49 million units. Specific to blade servers, IDC reported Dell’s blade server revenue grew faster than that of any of the top 5 vendors at 34.8%, however Cisco remained at the #2 blade server market share holder behind HP. Continue reading
Favorite Blade Server Website Links
With the split of HP and HPE, here is a list of updated blade-related websites that may help you find more information about blade servers. Since vendors tend to move their sites without notice if you find a dead link, please let me know. Continue reading
HP Introduces M.2 SSDs for Blade Servers
HP recently announced the industry’s first M.2 SSD for blade servers. If you’re not familiar with M.2 (pronounced M dot 2), it’s a small form factor card and connector supporting applications such as Wi-Fi, WWAN, USB, PCIe & SATA seen mostly in desktop / laptop systems. Adoption of this form factor in Tier 1 vendors is slow coming, which is why this is a big announcement for HP. Since this plugs into the system board, it avoids traversing the SAS mid-plane and allows for connectivity to the system PCIe bus supporting faster speeds (see below for details.) Continue reading
IDC Reports Rising Blade Market Share in 2Q15
IDC released their Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker yesterday and reported an overall 6.1% year over year (YoY) growth in servers. IDC had very little mentions about blade server market but reported the following: Continue reading
Websites You Need to Bookmark
One of my ongoing goals with this blog is to be a site for all things blade servers however it can be challenging for me to provide all of the information you may need. Because of this, I created a page dedicated to providing you with a list of helpful websites that you will want to bookmark. Continue reading
Blade Server Comparison – June 2015
Below is the chart for the newest 4 socket blade servers based on the Intel Xeon E5-4600 v3.
Gartner Releases New Magic Quadrant for Modular Servers – May 2015
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Gartner Magic Quadrant for blade servers as they discontinued it in 2014. Last month, Gartner created a new Magic Quadrant to replace the older one. The newest Magic Quadrant incorporates both blade servers and multi-node servers. According to Gartner, “the separation of the blade and multinode server markets has become harder to maintain as multinode servers adopt the technology characteristics of blade servers. With the evolution of new modular server designs, the concept of traditional server blades will fade in favor of increasingly variable ‘bricks’ or ‘cartridges.’ Consequently, a Magic Quadrant that tracked only the blade server market could only deliver partial value. This new Magic Quadrant is designed to better reflect the evolving market for any servers that display modular characteristics.” You can view the full article here, but I’ve summarized their findings for the top modular server vendors below.