The Sun Blade Blog
Blades Versus Racks
Q: Will Blades Solve Your Enterprise Problems?
Most likely, yes! Blades are being adopted at a rapid pace across enterprises. Enterprises want cost-effective, performance enhanced hardware that delivers solutions for high-performance computing (HPC), virtualization, back-office and Web 2.0 demands.
IT management is increasingly looking to maximize their staff productivity. Managers want tools that are up and running quickly. Blades are ideal. Once the lightweight chassis is setup, adding a new blade server requires sliding the device into the chassis. The power, cooling and management is available for each new blade upon insertion. Compare this with a rack mount which requires an administrator to bring special tools. Generally this includes screws, screwdrivers, possibly a ladder and a second person. From here, the team will manage the physical installation. Finally, the administrator will install a management client on the rack mount, configure, etc. To fill a 42U chassis, this procedure can be repeated more than 15 times!
Blades are a lot easier to manage than rack mounts. A blade weighs less and is smaller than a rack mount making blades easier to handle. Since power and I/O are shared, there are no cables to detach in the back. Sharing power reduces overall power consumption. In fact, blades consume up to 43% less power than rack mounts. Plus, the entire blade chassis has better reliability. For example, if a fan fails, you can quickly ( < 10 minutes) replace the fan. Typically in a rack mount, a failed fan requires a complete rack mount shutdown and hands on tinkering within the enclosure. The sharing also leads to reduced cabling.
I hope this is a good starting point for a discussion between blade and rack mount fans. Leave a comment or contact your Sun representative. Our blade offerings are true class leaders. Check them out when you get a chance.
Posted at 09:23AM Aug 20, 2007 by Amit Raman in Sun | Comments[1]
Personally I love the look and the idea of blades. However so far I have found myself buying regular rackmount systems for my customers (I do hosting and colocation). Reason is that the initial startup costs are high and it cannot be recouped until the blade system is what, 50% or 70% full? Also the blades are more money than an equivalent rackmount server.
Posted by Patrick Giagnocavo on August 20, 2007 at 12:19 PM PDT #