Tag Archives: blade server

(UPDATED) How IBM Can Provide 1,800 Processing Cores on a Single Blade Server

UPDATED 11-16-2010

IBM BladeCenter GPU Expansion Blade with HS22IBM recently announced a new addition to their BladeCenter family – the IBM BladeCenter GPU Expansion blade.  This new offering provides a single HS22 with the capability of hosting up to 4 x NVIDIA Tesla M2070 or Tesla M2070Q GPUs each running 448 processing cores each.  Doing the math, this equals the possibility of having 4,928 processing cores in a single 9u IBM BladeCenter H chassis.  That means you could have 19,712 processing cores PER RACK.  With such astonishing numbers, let’s take a deeper look at the IBM BladeCenter GPU Expansion blade.  

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Brocade FCoE Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter

Brocade Converged 10GbE Switch for IBM BladeCenterIBM recently announced the addition of a Brocade Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switch module for the IBM BladeCenter designed to deliver up to 24% savings over traditional 10Gb Ethernet & 8Gb FC setup. 

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(UPDATED) The Best Blade Server Option Is…[Part 1 – A Look at Cisco]

Updated on 9/13/2010 with link to Sean McGee’s I/O Card Blog Post
 
One of the questions I get the most is, “which blade server option is best for me?” My honest answer is always, “it depends.” The reality is that the best blade infrastructure for YOU is really going to depend on what is important to you. Based on this, I figured it would be a good exercise to do a high level comparison of the blade chassis offerings from Cisco, Dell, HP and IBM. If you ready through my past blog posts, you’ll see that my goal is to be as unbiased as possible when it comes to talking about blade servers. I’m going to attempt to be “vendor neutral” with this post as well, but I welcome your comments, thoughts and criticisms. Continue reading →

(UPDATED) 4TB SAN, 3 ESX Hosts for only $32,000? YES, It’s Real!

(Updated 7/27/2010 – 11 am EST – added info on power and tower options)

 When you think about blade servers, you probably think, “they are too expensive.” When you think about doing a VMware project, you probably think, “my servers are too old” or “I can’t afford new servers.” For $8 per GB, you can have blade servers preloaded with VMware ESXi 4.1 AND 4TB of storage! Want to know how? Keep reading.  Continue reading →

What Does it Take to Design an HP Blade Server?

BL685c G7What’s the process to design an HP blade server?  Find out on my interview with Gary Thome, Chief Blade Architect for HP.  Thanks to the friends at SDR News, I was able to talk with Gary at the HP Tech Forum last month in Las Vegas.  In the video below, Gary discusses the steps it takes for HP to design the next generation blade and he discusses the latest blade servers announced at the HP Technology Forum. Continue reading →

New BL465c G7 and BL685c G7 (New Features)

Along with the Intel blade server announcements, Tuesday HP also announced two new AMD based blades, the BL465c G7 and BL685G7.  Although originally viewed as a refresh of their existing AMD blade servers, while at the HP Tech Forum in Las Vegas, I found there were a few interesting facts.  Let’s take a look. Continue reading →

(UPDATED) FIRST LOOK: HP's New Blade Servers and Converged Switch

(Updated  6/22/2010, 1:00 a.m. Pacific, with updated BL620 image and 2nd Switch pic)

As expected, HP announced today new blade servers to their BladeSystem lineup as well as a new converged switch for their chassis. Everyone expected updates to the BL460 and BL490, the BL2x220c and even the BL680 blade servers, but the BL620 G7 blade server was a surprise (at least to me.)  Before I highlight the announcements, I have to preface this by saying I don’t have a lot of technical information yet.  I attended the press conference at HP Tech Forum 2010 in Las Vegas, but I didn’t get the press kit in advance.  I’ll update this post with links to the Spec Sheets as they become available. Continue reading →