Last month, VMware announced a new vSAN Ready Node using the Cisco UCS B-Series blade server. Blade servers aren’t new to vSAN Ready Nodes (see “VMware Virtual SAN Ready Node on a Blade Server“) and Cisco isn’t new to the vSAN business – they’ve had their UCS C-Series rack servers certified since “Ready Nodes” were announced, so why is this announcement interesting? It’s because it is the first vSAN node that only includes 2 drives. Continue reading
Tag Archives: blade server
Dell EMC PowerEdge M630 Delivers Energy Cost Savings vs HPE
A new finding from the Dell EMC PowerEdge Engineering identified the Dell EMC PowerEdge M630 blade server as being more efficient and offering lower energy costs than the HPE ProLiant BL460 Gen 9. Continue reading
2016 – Year in Review
As I wrap up my 7th year with this blog I wanted to take a minute to pause and say thank you. Without your interest in this blog post, I don’t think I would have stuck with it. I appreciate your ideas and your feedback / comments, even if I may not like what you say. As my final post of the year, I thought I would provide you with some insights on what was popular, what has been searched on, etc. If you don’t see something you’d like to know about, let me know in the comments below. Thanks for your continued interest, and Happy New Year! Continue reading
GPUs and Blade Servers – A Good Idea?
UPDATED 9.23.2016 When looking at the blade server market, the options for GPUs are very limited – in fact only a couple of vendors offer them (more on this later.) So you have to question, is it a good idea to put a GPU in a blade server? Let’s review and find out. Continue reading
Which Embedded Management License Do You Need?
Whether you are looking at Dell or HPE blade servers, one important consideration is the type of embedded management license you need. Too often, I’ve heard of blade server users having to go back to a vendor to get a license upgrade because the current version doesn’t do what you need it to. The charts below are designed to help you proactively determine what license is needed prior to making your purchase. Continue reading
VMware Virtual SAN Ready Node on a Blade Server
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
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.