UPDATED I recently had to determine the best option for a customer from the Virtual SAN Compatibility Guide / Virtual SAN Ready Node guide and was a bit surprised to see only a single blade server vendor listed. When it comes to choosing a server form factor, there are many reasons to choose blade servers, and several reasons not to choose them (see “5 Reasons You May NOT Want a Blade Server – April 2013.”) If you think blade servers will fit for your infrastructure needs, here are a few options to consider.
Blade Server Comparison – June 2016
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
New Study Shows Dell Blades Outperform Cisco UCS
A newly published study by Principled Technologies reports in tests that the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade environment delivered up to 91.7% greater throughput while running a virtualized OLTP database workload compared to a similarly priced Cisco UCS 5108 blade environment. In addition they found that the Dell environment delivered consistent scaling as blade servers were added versus the performance degradation observed in the Cisco environment.
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.
Dell Releases HTML5 and Redfish Support for iDRAC
With the launch of the new Intel CPUs, today Dell released the newest update of their iDRAC (integrated Dell Remote Access Controller) software which includes support for HTML5 (in other words, no more JAVA!!) Continue reading
Intel Releases Broadwell CPUs for Servers
Intel officially launched the E5-2600 v4 CPU (code name “Broadwell”) today for servers which adds extra cores and faster memory. Today’s release by Intel is not a major architectural CPU change, but instead an enhancement to their existing CPU offering. This means you probably won’t see any “new” servers released, but you will have new CPUs to choose from in the future. Before I go into the details of the E5-2600 v4, I want to take a second and help you understand Intel’s CPU strategy. Continue reading
Dell’s VRTX Gains New Storage Option
As I speak with customers about the Dell PowerEdge VRTX, one of the limits that often gets brought up is the fact that it”only” has 25 x 2.5″ or 12 x 3.5″ drive bays. That is no longer the case. In a quiet release in December, Dell began offering an extra option for VRTX which allows the chassis to connect with up to 2 x external MD storage arrays and share the storage with all servers.
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.
Dell vs Cisco – New Tolly Report (updated)
UPDATED – Tolly Enterprises recently published a new Tolly Report comparing Dell PowerEdge FX2 with Cisco UCS showing results favoring Dell. The 17 page document provides background on each of the product architectures and tests them in four test cases. Continue reading
2015 in Review
As another year has ended, I have to take the time to thank you. This blog was created for my own use, to be able to access blade information at any time; but it grew into something bigger. For each of you that use this site, I give a sincere thank you. This site is a personal site that I’ve maintained since Fall of 2009 and I get ZERO money to run it. No advertising dollars or anything. It’s a hobby, so your participation is greatly appreciated. That said, I thought for my first blog post of 2016, I’d provide you with some insight into the numbers. So here we go.