As you no doubt heard by now, VMware has announced a new version of vSphere along with some new or improved features however, this post will not highlight these features. In this post, I want to talk about what did not improve – the licensing. Continue reading
Tag Archives: blade servers
Blade Chassis I/O Diagrams
Many people get confused as to why so many I/O modules are needed within a given blade chassis. The basic concept is simple (in most cases) – for each port you need on a given blade server, you need to have a corresponding I/O module. For example, if you need 4 NICs, you’re going to need 4 Ethernet modules (in most cases.) In today’s post, I thought I would keep it simple and publish the I/O diagrams of Cisco, Dell, HP and IBM chassis. Of course, I am human and “have been known to make mistakes – from time to time” so please feel free to correct me on any errors you see. Enjoy.
(Updated 8/3/2011 – fixed Dell M1000e Full Height I/O Diagram)
IBM Offers FREE Blade Chassis Through December (No Purchase Required)
IBM once again is promoting is striving to increase market share by offering customers the chance to get a “free” IBM BladeCenter chassis. The last time they promoted a free chassis was in November, so this year they kicked in the promo effective July 5, 2011. The promotion is for a free chassis – without any purchase, however a chassis without any blades or switches is just a metal box. Regardless, this promotion is a great way to help offset some of the cost to implementation of your blade server project. Continue reading
BladesMadeSimple.com is Looking for Help
Are you passionate about technology? Do you stay up to date on what’s new in the x86 marketplace, especially blade servers? Do you like to work for free? If so, BladesMadeSimple.com could use you!
The End of Blade Servers?
Personal Cassette Players. Portable CD players. Dial up Internet. Betamax. The VCR. Pagers. These are all popular technologies that have gone away. When they were hot, you would never have expected for them to one day be extinct. Are blade servers set to follow in the footsteps of these other blade technologies? Continue reading
Rack Servers vs Blade Servers – Which is Best?
Since the dawn of mankind (or more realistically, the early 2000’s) people have debated whether blade servers or rack servers were best for their datacenter environment. It may surprise you that I personally don’t believe that blade servers fit everywhere. In fact, if you aren’t running out of power/cooling, you don’t have space constraints, you need a lot of local I/O expansion or you don’t have management issues with your physical server environment, you may be better off with rack servers. That being said, there are a lot of benefits to a blade server design as well.
Comprehensive List of Blade Server Web Site Links
If you are like me, you are constantly referring to manufacture web sites for product specs, available options, etc. Today, I’ve put together a list of web sites that will help streamline your search. Since links change and new ones get added, I’ve put out a “helpful links” tab at the top of my blog as well for you to reference and bookmark. As I get recommendations from my readers, I’ll update the “helpful links” tab, so be sure to add it to your favorites. Continue reading
Keep Up with HP Announcements at HP Discover
This week HP has its annual event, called HP Discover, in Las Vegas. Previously this event was focused on hardware only and was called HP Tech Forum, but this year HP combined hardware and software into one uber event, called HP Discover. If you are familiar with VMware’s VMworld – this event is very similar, only it focuses on HP products. This is a great marketing event for HP but more importantly, it gives HP customers, partners and press insight into what’s happening with HP.
Cisco Finally Releases UCS Market Share Numbers
May 24, 2011 – IDC came out with their 1Q 2011 worldwide server market revenue report today showing that Cisco has finally entered the market standings with a 3rd place standing at 9.4% factory revenue share . IDC’s findings also showed that both HP and IBM decreased their blade server market share from Q4 2010. Continue reading
Are We Finally Getting Market Share Numbers for Cisco UCS?
If you’ve been reading this blog over the past six months, you’ll know that I’ve continued to bust on Cisco for not providing market share numbers after selling their UCS product line for two years. I believe the wait is now over.