IDC and Cisco confirmed this week that Cisco has taken the #1 x86 blade server spot in North America for Q1 in 2014 with 40% revenue market share according to a recent CRN report. This is quite an accomplishment especially since Cisco has only been reporting their numbers for 3 years. So you might wonder – what is the secret to Cisco’s success? I have a few ideas (right or wrong) that might shed some light on why Cisco is having success in their blade server business.
IDC Reports Increased Blade Server Growth in Q1 2014
The quarterly IDC Worldwide Server Tracker was released on May 28, 2014 and it reported that in spite of a decrease in overall server sales, blade servers continue to increase with HP leading the way. To save you the task of reading all of the irrelevant server data, here’s a summary of their blade server findings:
Dell’s PowerEdge VRTX Gets An Upgrade
The past few months have seen some long awaited new additions to Dell’s PowerEdge VRTX system. In an effort to prevent this from being an “all Dell” blog, I’ve held off writing about these new additions until today. In a quick summary, the new additions include: 2nd PERC, added support for VMware ESXi 5.5, added support for the M820 blade server and the ability to repurpose blade servers from the M1000e. Let’s dig into each of these.
Fixing HP BladeSystem Problems – Easy to Do
I’ll lift up the curtain and tell you I rely on Google Alerts to help me find blade server related topics to write about. This is the best way for me to catch news, or topics that would otherwise be missed.
IDC Reports Worldwide Blade Server Market Revenues Increase in Q4 2013
IDC came out with their Q4 2013 worldwide server market revenue report on February 27, 2014. Unfortunately I missed the announcement due to email issues, so I’ve decided to streamline things and summarize the report.
Blade Server Comparisons – March 2014
This update includes blade servers with the Intel Xeon E5-4600 v2 CPU. I’ll add the E7 v2 once they begin shipping (and I have some data).
Intel E5-4600 v2 CPU Announced
Intel announced the refresh of their 4 socket E5 line taking the CPU up to 12 cores, and 30MB of shared cache and supporting memory speeds up to 1866 MTS DDR3 DIMMs.
I’ve updated the current blade server comparison list to include the E5-4600 v2 offering:
Direct link to PDF (117kb): BladesMadeSimple_Blade_Server_Comparison_3.12.14
If you see anything missing or incorrect, let me know.
Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com. He has over 17 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 works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global Enterprise market.
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.
Sneak Peek at HP ProLiant BL660c E5-4600 v2 Offerings
It appears someone at HP slipped up and posted Intel E5-4600 v2 specs for the HP ProLiant BL660c Gen 8 blade server a few weeks ahead of Intel’s announcement later in Q1. HP has since removed the details, but customers looking at the 4 socket blade server may be interested to know what HP will be offering, so check out Google’s cache of the HP QuickSpec at:
Not a new product, just an update in the CPU offering. When Intel officially releases the E5-4600 v2 CPU, I’ll make sure to provide details along with the other blade server vendors offering. I’ll also update the blade comparison document, so please make sure to check back often.
Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com. He has over 17 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 works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global Enterprise market.
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.
Blade Server Comparisons – Feb 2014
This update includes blade servers with the Intel Xeon E5-2400 v2 CPU. I’ll add the E7 v2 once they begin shipping (and I have some data).
Link: BladesMadeSimple_BladeServer_Comparison_updated2.26.14
Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com. He has over 17 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 works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global Enterprise market.
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.
New Blade Servers Based on Intel E7 v2 Announced
The Intel Xeon E7 v2 CPU was officially announced today advertising 2x the performance, 3x the memory and 4x the I/O bandwidth compared to previous generations. For more information on what the E7 v2 CPU offers, as well as what blade servers were announced, continue reading below.