Performance Results – HP BL660c vs Dell M820

A few days ago I compared the HP ProLiant BL660c blade server with the Dell PowerEdge M820, so today I wanted to point you to some performance data.  Brian Basset, a Performance Engineer within Dell’s Solutions Performance Analysis group, recently ran some SPEC benchmarks on both the HP BL660c and the Dell M820 and the results were interesting.  In summary: Continue reading

HP BL660c vs Dell M820 – A Comparison

If you are a recurring reader to this blog, you’ll know that I work for Dell (1 year as of August 15) which makes me a bit bias toward Dell.  However, with the recent announcements of 4 socket blade servers based on Intel’s E5-4600 processor by HP and Dell, I thought it would be interesting to see how they line up.  With the attempt to be unbiased, I’ve listed everything I thought was relative about both servers so that you, the reader, could make your own decision about which server would work best in your environment.  I welcome any feedback, thoughts or comments below.  The data below is from HP and Dell’s websites and is current as of 8.14.12. Continue reading

4 Socket Blade Server – Which Intel CPU Do You Choose?

UPDATED 10.13.14

Intel Xeon E5-4600 Quad CPU DiagramNow that Intel has released the 4 socket Sandy Bridge CPU, known as the Intel Xeon E5-4600, how do you know whether you need this processor or the Intel E7-4800 CPU?  This is becoming a common question as more and more people migrate larger sized workloads to 4 socket x86 systems in the attempt to lower overall TCO.  To understand which processor you would need, we must first

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Is This The End of AMD?

AMDvsIntel

It is no surprise that AMD is losing the battle of the x86 server market in the datacenter, but I had no idea their market share was as low as it appears.  Even in the blade server space, you may notice that only a couple of server manufacturers offer AMD now.  A recent study of AMD vs Intel Continue reading

Dell Announces Their First Storage Blade: PS-M4110

Colossus_EQL_PSM4110_Product_Source_Guide_v6Today at the Dell Storage Forum in Boston, Dell announced their first ever storage blade –  known as the “EqualLogic PS-M4110 Blade Array”.  This new addition to the Dell storage and blade portfolio will provide a fully-virtualized storage, server and networking solution within a single blade chassis.

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Dell Unveils ARM-based Server Ecosystem

Dell Copper ARM Server Ecosystem

Until today, I’ve not discussed modular hybrid server platforms like Dell’s PowerEdge C platform or HP’s ProLiant SL Servers because I personally do not think they should be classified as a “blade server.”  Perhaps I’m old school, but in order to qualify as a blade server, there must be 1) shared infrastructure 2) shared power/cooling, 3) shared I/O and 4) shared infrastructure management.  When I look at hybrid platforms like the ones mentioned above, I don’t feel they qualify as a blade server – however the marketplace, seems comfortable claiming these products as blade servers, hence today’s posting.  If you agree with me and feel this is not a true blade server, then feel free to move along to another blog article.

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