Blade Servers..how does it work?

[TechCarnivore]

Hi Gang,
We are toying with the idea of implementing a blade server as a part of our server consolidation and migration project (Windows 2000 to 2003)

I'd like to know more about blade technology.
Specifically, I understand blade servers consist of multiple cpus, could I in theory "partition" a set of cpus to run a different OS or different apps?

For example if it were an 8 CPU blade server could I have have that divided up into 2 servers (4 cpus each)running two different operating systems?

 

[TheLad]

I do not know a lot about Blades myself but I would check out the HP documentation at the link below:

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/80316-0-0-0-121.aspx

They would appear to be mini computers that fit into the Blade chassis rather than one big system that you allocate resources from.

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[jmd0252]

From the sound of what you are doing. I would suggest going to a VM type os solution. I have no experience with the Microsoft product, so I cannot address that. VMWare allows you to "create", multiple instances of a machine on a single physical machine. You load the base VMWare OS on the machine, and then create multiple machines. As Iunderstand it,, the operating OS, such as Windows 2003 server, will not allow you to partion or create multiple machine off of a single physical machine. Just an idea for you to consider.

 

[blister911]

Basically a blade server is a chassis that accepts a number of add-on boards. The number of boards depends on how big of a chassis you buy. Each board is its own server and typically consists of processors and memory, however some can accomodate hard drives and other smaller additions.

I can't speak for all blade servers, but the ones we've been looking at will allow you to run different OS within the same chassis. The big benefit to having blades is that you don't pay (repetatively) for the redundancy options (power, fan, network). It's on the chassis. You pay for it once and then every board you plug into the chassis can take advantage of it.

They work real well for application that require a small amount of disk, but need a fair amount of CPU and Ram. Like a web server farm. Or you can connnect it to a SAN for those that require more, but that is a different discussion.

As for VM. Check the utilization on your current servers. VM is good for applications that need to run in a separate environment, but don't consume a majority of resources, say like < 10%. You can then take 4-5 of them and combine them into a VM environment, which would consume 40-50%. That way instead of having 5 servers basically doing nothing, you have only one that is better utilized. Now take that to a larger scale. If you are getting a 5:1 consolidation and you have 100 servers, you could, in theory drop that back to 20. Then your power and cooling requirements would drop significantly. Realize you still need to purchase the OS for each VM CLIENT, as well as the OS for the HOST server. It an additional cost up front, but you're not having to buy additional hardware and you are getting some power and cooling benefits, too.