I recently had a customer looking for 32 Ethernet ports on a 4 server system to drive a virtualization platform. At 8 x 1GbE per compute node, this was a typical VMware virtualization platform (they had not moved to 10GbE yet) but it’s not an easy task to perform on blade servers – however the Dell PowerEdge VRTX is an ideal platform, especially for remote locations. Continue reading
Tag Archives: M620
Max Ethernet Connections on 2 Socket Blade Servers
As 10GbE storage connectivity becomes more popular, the number of 10GbE connections you can get on a blade server becomes a consideration. In this blog post, I’ll review the offerings each blade vendor has to help you easily decide which works best for your project.
A Detailed Look at Dell PowerEdge VRTX
What happens when you merge rack servers with blade servers? You get the newly announced Dell PowerEdge VRTX. Three years in the making, the Dell PowerEdge VRTX (pronounced “ver-tex”) is advertised as a revolutionary, easy-to-manage office-optimized data center that converges servers, storage and networking into a compact package. In the following post, I’ll give you a deep-dive look into the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solution.
An Introduction to Dell PowerEdge VRTX
An Introduction to Dell PowerEdge VRTX
Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com. He has over 15 years of experience in the x86 server marketplace. Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization. Kevin works for Dell as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global Enterprise market.
Disclaimer: The views presented in this blog are personal views and may or may not reflect any of the contributors’ employer’s positions. Furthermore, the content is not reviewed, approved or published by any employer.
Test Report: Power Efficiency Comparison of Dell and Cisco High Memory Capacity Blade Servers
Dell recently published a new whitepaper that compares the performance and power efficiency of four of the Dell PowerEdge M710HD and M620 blades vs. four of the Cisco B250 M2 blade servers. Here is a summary of the key findings:
Dell’s PowerEdge M620 Blade Server Offering Up to 768GB RAM
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UPDATED 3/7/12) With the launch of Intel’s Xeon E5-2600 processor, Dell revealed the details of the new PowerEdge M620 blade server. Offering an industry first 24 memory DIMMs in a half-height form factor, the M620 offers up to 768GB of RAM along side the newly announced Intel E5-2600. The Dell PowerEdge M620 also comes with the ability to chose from a variety of LOM (LAN on Motherboard) cards – a feature first seen in the PowerEdge M710HD and M915 last Summer. Formerly known as the Network Daughter Card, the newly renamed feature, called Select Network Adapter, is a removable network card that gives buyers the option of choosing from Broadcom, Intel or QLogic adapters – each offering up to two ports of 10Gb. Since it is removable, it offers investment protection as new technology becomes available. For more features and details about the M620, see below.
Dell Announces New Blade Server – M620
In anticipation of Intel’s upcoming E5-2600 CPU (aka Sandy Bridge) announcement, Dell officially announced the 12th Generation of PowerEdge servers today. Although the specifics of the 12th Generation, or “12G”, servers have not yet been released, it is very clear there will be a new blade server added to the Dell PowerEdge portfolio: the M620.
While Dell.com announcement site does not have a lot of the details of what’s coming in 12G, The Register has been able to secure some good information on the Dell PowerEdge M620 blade server that I’ll share with you.
- The M620’s size is “half-height”allowing you to put up to 16 inside of the Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis.
- It will hold up to 2 x Intel Xeon E5 CPUs
- It will hold up to 768GB of RAM (the same as its tower and rack equivalent)
- The M620 has two hot-plug, 2.5-inch drive bays, and can have SSD, SATA disk, or SAS disk drives slid into those two slots.
- The PERC S110 controller with software raid and the PERC H310, H710, and H710P controllers for internal RAID arrays can snap onto this M620 blade.
- The M620 has two SD cards for redundant embedded hypervisors to sit on.
Of course, there are a few other goodies that The Register didn’t mention – so I’ll hold off talking about until the official Intel announcement.
To read the full article from The Register discussing the next generation of Dell PowerEdge server (including the tower and rack models,) go to http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/27/dell_poweredge_12g_server_launch/
Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com. He has over 15 years of experience in the x86 server marketplace. Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization. Kevin works for Dell as a Server Specialist covering the Global 500 East market.
Photo from Dell.com