Blade Servers Vs Regular Rackmount

[tcngs]

Currently I use 1u or 2u Dual Xeon 3.06 ghz IBM servers. I am considering changing over to blade server because you can get more servers per you in. My question is though do you loose any performance going with the blade server?

 

The specs will be the same on the blade servers Dual 3.06 Xeon with 4gb of ram, I just was wondering if any of you had any experiance with the blade servers and if there was any lose of performance?

 

Thanks

[Redeye]

Blades are equal powerfull to regular servers with the same specs. There a few pro's and cons though.

 

Pro's:

- more performance in a rack

- redundant switches, nic's, psu's

 

 

Con's:

- Need more power (20A at least with a full rack)

- Hi-density cooling is needed (20Kva with Bladeservers, 5Kva is normal)

- Invest at the beginning, save on long term.

 

In europe, not much datacenters are happy or allow Hi-density computing (Blade servers). About the cooling issue, check apc.com for some free Whitepapers.

[tcngs]

When you say "Need more power (20A at least with a full rack)" do you mean a full rack like a 42 u rack or a full 10 slot blade server?

 

Thanks for the reply

[Redeye]

When you say "Need more power (20A at least with a full rack)" do you mean a full rack like a 42 u rack or a full 10 slot blade server?

 

Thanks for the reply

 

a full 42U rack.

[qwidjib0]

About 4 years ago blade enclosures were mostly what we used (much like http://colomachines.com/colomachinev2/Blade-System/CB102/CB102-BLADE.htm ), those were actually fantastic with cooling. They're very easy to access quickly on the DC floor, but they're a lot less scalable.

 

Usually for blade servers to be come cost-effective in terms of conserving rack space, you need unusually high power density available to you (or very low-end machines). Very rarely will people use these with 110v.. 208v is the norm. Otherwise, you'll potentially need 60a-80a to the rack, and generally that type of power density in a data center just makes less sense. Reason being, space is massively cheaper than electricity these days.

[Monk]

Blade servers are fine, the differences are cost vs cabinet space, obiviously.