Here is a list of blade-related websites that may help you find more information about blade servers. Since vendors tend to move their sites without notice if you find a dead link, please let me know. If you have other sites that you think are worthy to remember, email me at “kevin AT bladesmadesimple.com”.
Continue reading
Tag Archives: Cisco
Vblocks Will Continue to Use UCS
As the new year kicks off, Dell EMC leadership has made it clear that the partnership with Cisco is as strong as always. Cisco’s UCS is the compute layer of the Dell EMC Vblock so many wondered if there would be a “Dblock” or something similar using the PowerEdge blade server product from the former VCE group and the answer is an astounding “NO!” (In case you missed it, check out Chad Sakac‘s blog post, “Vblock and VxBlock Use Cisco UCS. Got it?“) 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
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
New Study Shows Dell Blades Outperform Cisco UCS
A newly published study by Principled Technologies reports in tests that the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade environment delivered up to 91.7% greater throughput while running a virtualized OLTP database workload compared to a similarly priced Cisco UCS 5108 blade environment. In addition they found that the Dell environment delivered consistent scaling as blade servers were added versus the performance degradation observed in the Cisco environment.
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
IDC Worldwide Server Tracker Shows 5.1% Growth in Q3 2015
IDC published their Q3 2015 findings last week, and the results were overall positive. In year over year revenues, the worldwide server market saw revenues increase of 5.1%, or $13.4 billion, the sixth consecutive quarter of growth while shipments grew 4.5%, or 2.49 million units. Specific to blade servers, IDC reported Dell’s blade server revenue grew faster than that of any of the top 5 vendors at 34.8%, however Cisco remained at the #2 blade server market share holder behind HP. Continue reading
IDC Reports Rising Blade Market Share in 2Q15
IDC released their Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker yesterday and reported an overall 6.1% year over year (YoY) growth in servers. IDC had very little mentions about blade server market but reported the following: Continue reading
Blade Server Comparison – June 2015
Below is the chart for the newest 4 socket blade servers based on the Intel Xeon E5-4600 v3.
Gartner Releases New Magic Quadrant for Modular Servers – May 2015
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Gartner Magic Quadrant for blade servers as they discontinued it in 2014. Last month, Gartner created a new Magic Quadrant to replace the older one. The newest Magic Quadrant incorporates both blade servers and multi-node servers. According to Gartner, “the separation of the blade and multinode server markets has become harder to maintain as multinode servers adopt the technology characteristics of blade servers. With the evolution of new modular server designs, the concept of traditional server blades will fade in favor of increasingly variable ‘bricks’ or ‘cartridges.’ Consequently, a Magic Quadrant that tracked only the blade server market could only deliver partial value. This new Magic Quadrant is designed to better reflect the evolving market for any servers that display modular characteristics.” You can view the full article here, but I’ve summarized their findings for the top modular server vendors below.