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.
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
5 Modes of the Dell FN IO Module
Dell’s FN I/O Modules (FN IOMs) are integrated devices that sit in the rear of the FX2 chassis and behave like traditional network switches. The FN IOMs provide 8 x 10GbE internal ports to the connected server nodes while offering 4 x 10GbE external links for upstream connectivity. What makes the FN I/O Module unique is that it supports 5 operational modes: Standalone (SMUX), VLT, Stacking, Programmable MUX (PMUX) and Full-switch. Below are details on each of these modes.
How To Back Up the Dell FlexAddress
If you own a Dell blade chassis, you are probably familiar with the FlexAddress feature however you have probably not wondered how to back it up – something that is well documented. Fortunately a few of my Dell peers have put together the steps for a definitive backup method.
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