All you wanted to know about blade servers
We see these commercials all the time for blade servers, and I get the question all the time: What are blade servers? This is a quick run down on this very interesting technology:
Blade server basics:
Definition: blade servers are part of a computer configuration where power, cooling, storage and connectivity are largely provided by an outer housing or chassis. The chassis contains and services a number of specialised, stripped down motherboard units - the blade servers - each one a complete computer or service device containing only vital processing and storage elements.
Blade server technology was initially developed in the early millennium through a partnership between IBM and Intel. Later, a number of major companies, led by IBM, formed an “industry community” in February 2006, with a website base at blade.org. The mission of the community is to “accelerate the growth and adoption of [blade] technologies in the market.”
October 20th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Well, personally I haven’t actually heard of Blade servers.
Might I ask, what actual benefits are there over the somewhat “old” technology?
October 21st, 2007 at 1:00 am
I see ads for these things in all the PC magazines. I keep thinking that they’re trying to reinvent the wheel. 1U servers are pretty darn small already, or I should say they’re pretty thin already. But if they wanted to make them even smaller they could switch to Via C7 cpus or System on Chip devices.
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:42 am
Hmm, I never heard about them before. Are these kinds of servers used more than the usual types of servers then, because you say we see commercials all the time for blade servers, but I haven’t actually seen one.
Nice post btw
Thx
November 2nd, 2007 at 5:37 am
1U servers are pretty small. The idea is that you can take 8-16 of these things and share some of the components. This is supposed to lower the overall costs. Think of it more like shared-computing in a single box.
December 4th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Thanks for giving the knowlegde about blade servers.