Thanks to fellow blogger, M. Sean McGee (http://www.mseanmcgee.com/) I was alerted to the fact that Cisco announced on today, Sept. 14, their 13th blade server to the UCS family – the Cisco UCS B230 M1.
This newest addition performs a few tricks that no other vendor has been able to perform. Continue reading
Last week at VMworld 2010 I had the opportunity to get some great pictures of HP and Dell’s newest blade servers. The HP Proliant BL620 G7, the HP Proliant BL680 G7 and the Dell PowerEdge M610X and M710HD. These newest blade servers are exciting offerings from HP and Dell so I encourage you to take a few minutes to look. Continue reading
The VMware VMmark web site was recently updated to show Dell’s PowerEdge M910 blade server in the #1 slot (for blades) in the 16 core space. I think the PowerEdge M910 is very intriguing, so I thought I’d spend some time highlighting the features. Continue reading
They make it look so complicated in the movies. Detailed covert operations with the intent to hack into a casino’s mainframe preceeded by weeks of staged planned rehearsals, but I’m here to tell you it’s much easier than that.
This is my story of how I had 20 seconds of complete access to The Venetian Casino’s data center, and lived to tell about it.
Dell announced today two new additions to their blade server family – the PowerEdge 11G M710HD and the M610x. The two new servers are just a part of Dell’s “Blade 3.0 Launch” – a campaign highlighting Dell’s ongoing effort to become the leader in blade server technology. Over the next several months, Dell will be making changes in their chassis infrastructure introducing more efficient power supplies and fans that will require Continue reading
NOTE: IDC revised their report on May 28, 2010. This post now includes those changes.
IDC reported on May 28, 2010 that worldwide server sales for Q1 2010 factory revenues increased 4.6 4.7% year over year to $10.4 billion in the first quarter of 2010 (1Q10). They also reported the blade server market accelerated and continued its sharp growth in the quarter with factory revenue increasing 37.1% 37.2% year over year, with shipment growth increasing by 20.8% compared to 1Q09. According to IDC, nearly 90% of all blade revenue is driven by x86 systems, a segment in which blades now represent 18.8% of all x86 server revenue. Continue reading
Updated 5/24/2010 – I’ve received some comments about expandability and I’ve received a correction about the speed of Dell’s memory, so I’ve updated this post. You’ll find the corrections / additions below in GREEN.
Since I’ve received a lot of comments from my post on the Dell FlexMem Bridge technology, I thought I would do an unbiased comparison between Dell’s FlexMem Bridge technology (via the PowerEdge 11G M910 blade server) vs IBM’s MAX5 + HX5 blade server offering. In summary both offerings provide the Intel Xeon 7500 CPU plus the ability to add “extended memory” offering value for virtualization, databases and any other workloads that benefit from large amounts of memory. Continue reading
Let’s face it. Virtualization is everywhere.
Odds are there is something virtualized in your data center. If not, it soon will be. As more workloads become virtualized, chances are you are going to run out of “capacity” on your virtualization host. 
When a host’s capacity is exhausted, 99% of the time it is because the host ran out of memory, not CPU. Continue reading
Perhaps one of Dell’s best kept secrets on their 11G servers (blade, rack and tower) is something called Lifecycle Controller. This innovative offering allows a user to configure the hardware, run diagnostics and prep the server for an operating system. “SO WHAT?” you are probably thinking – “HP and IBM have this with their SmartStart and ServerGuide CD’s!” Yes, you are right, however Continue reading