BLADE SERVER TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
Blade servers were developed in response to a critical and growing
need in the datacenter: the requirement to increase server performance
and availability without dramatically increasing the size, cost and
management complexity of an ever growing data center. To keep up with
user demand and because of the space and power demands of traditional
tower and rackmount servers, data centers are being forced to expand
their physical plant at an alarming rate.
Enter blade servers. They consolidate power and system level
functions into a single, integrated chassis and enable the addition of
servers and other components such as communications and peripheral
connections via easy to install blades. Blade server technology greatly
increases server density, lowers power and cooling costs, eases server
expansion and simplifies datacenter management.
Blade servers are not just a new way to package traditional
computing components. Rather, they are integrated systems designed to
deliver server performance in efficient, high density, easy to expand,
and easy to manage units.
Blade Server Benefits
- Reduced Space Requirements - Greater density provides up to 35 to
45 percent improvement compared to tower or rackmounted servers.
- Reduced Power Consumption and Improved Power Management -
consolidating power supplies into the blade chassis reduces the number
of separate power supplies needed and reduces the power requirements
per server.
- Lower Management Cost - server consolidation and resource
centralization simplifies server deployment, management and
administration and improves management and control.
- Simplified Cabling - rack mount servers, while helping
consolidate servers into a centralized location, create wiring
proliferation. Blade servers simplify cabling requirements and reduce
wiring by up to 70 percent. Power cabling, operator wiring (keyboard,
mouse, etc.) and communications cabling (Ethernet, SAN connections,
cluster connection) are greatly reduced.
- Future Proofing Through Modularity - as new processor,
communications, storage and interconnect technology becomes available,
it can be implemented in blades that install into existing equipment,
upgrading server operation at a minimum cost and with no disruption of
basic server functionality.
- Easier Physical Deployment - once a blade server chassis has
been installed, adding additional servers is merely a matter of sliding
in additional blades into the chassis. Software management tools
simplify the management and reporting functions for blade servers.
Redundant power modules and consolidated communication bays simplify
integration into datacenters and increase reliability.
Key Blade Server Technologies
Hardware:
- Servers Blades - high density computing engines with 1 to 4 processors and memory
- Blade Chassis - enclosures with integrated power and
racks for housing server blades, communication blades and connections
to external peripherals and inter-chassis links
- Communication Blades - integrated blades with Ethernet, InfiniBand and proprietary communication adapters and switches
- Power and Cooling Systems - centralized power distribution components that power the blade chassis and components
- Storage Subsystems - hard disk and tape storage
subsystems can be inside the blade chassis or external to the chassis.
Blade servers can be disk-less since they can boot from external
storage in a Storage Area Network or SAN. This configuration can
increase reliability and reduce space requirements by partitioning
storage resources in one centralized location and computing resources
in another. This also eliminates storage redundancies and simplifies
storage management.
Software:
- Software Management Tools - management software that enables server administrators to deploy, control and monitor server resources.
- Virtualization Software - software that enables maximum
usages of server resources by creating virtual server resources that
tap physical resources as needed by the application usage
Summary
Blade servers are efficient solutions for data centers requiring
flexible, high-density deployment and management of high performance
servers. Blade servers can pack more server performance into less space
while reducing cost and complexity, simplifying deployment and
management, and improving overall data center performance.
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