Understading Blades/Enclosures

[snootalope]

We're in process of determining what blade/enclosure might be best for us. Smaller company 120 some employee's, currently have 19 servers. Not all 19 of course will go in the tub, maybe just 4 or 5 to start with.

From my understanding, the network is meshed throughout the back of the enclosure. So does this mean one single CAT6 cable to our gb switch would cover all blades in that tub?

What's the point of the mezzanine cards/connectors? I'm reading these install manuals over and over trying to figure out what exactly they do and what good it does that they do that. The only thing I can think up is it's some kind of connector that allows the entire tub to connect to another tub of a different class (different ports, etc.) Is this right? What other uses would one have for the mezzanine cards?

What about these switch/NIC adapters? If the tub already has a GB backbone throughout, why would one need extra ethernet ports? It only takes one cable to a network switch to give the enclosure connectivity right?

thanks for any advice or "schooling" on this... I need it!

 

[pgaliardo]

Snootalope,

I'm exactly in the same position right now as we hope to utilize blades early in the new year. From what I understand, blades should cut down cabling by about 75%. So yes, a single virtual connect switch for the internal blades and then 1 uplink to your existing switch. I don't know anything about the mezzanine cards yet.

As for the extra switches, I suppose you would use that if you were going to connect your other non-blade equipment to the enclosure - essentially making the switch in the enclosure the main switch. I guess the best way to visualize it is to imagine anything that is currently in your server/network rack can moved the the blade enclosure.

Hopefully someone out there that is actually using them can provide more insight.

 

[manic47]

Hello,

On the enclosures you have various choices of interconnect

To keep things simple you can fit a Cisco 3020 switch interconnect. This is a full blown switch, linked to the Blades via the backplane in the enclosure. You can link this to your LAN with 1 patch lead / fibre channel or whatever you choose.


The cheaper option is an ethernet passthrough.
It presents the LAN ports from the blades onto the rear of the enclosure, meaning 16 RJ 45 ports. These you connect into your existing LAN individually.


Mezzanine cards are used to add fibre SAN connectivity to the blades, if using these you also need an fibre interconnect for the enclosure.


Hopefully that helps a bit