blade servers (was Re: [Bioclusters] Any experiences with these guys? reeks)

[Marcia A. Goetsch]

I am looking at Sun's Bladeservers.  Anyone have any good/bad things to
say about them and the N1 provisioning software?  Also, how does the gig
ethernet switch in a blade chassis (blade center) work with the switches
for the company LAN?  You connect the blades to the switch and the
switch to the ethernet port to company switch?  Or something more
complex?

Marcia

On Mon, 2003-11-03 at 14:07, Goran Ceric wrote:
> We've had a rack full of IBM blades for 3-4 months now, and I am really 
> impressed. Management module has very nice administration and monitoring 
> capabilities including console redirection, environment monitoring, and 
> collecting data from individual management processors. Blade centers 
> also come with a copy of IBM Director 4 which I think is a great piece 
> of software. We didn't get their deployment software since I didn't want 
> to pay for it. Systemimager still works well enough for me. Cabling is 
> extremely neat since blade centers have built-in gigabit ethernet 
> switches, built-in power supplies etc. 14 blades in a single 7U blade 
> center are networked internally, and there are 4 external ports in each 
> switch.  Also, instead of 84 power cables, there are only 24 in a whole 
> rack, and half of these are from redundant power supplies. Considering 
> that you get all this redundancy and gigabit switches included, plus 
> avoid the cabling nightmare, and get a system that is extremely easy to 
> manage, I don't think IBM blades cost much more (with our pricing) than 
> a comparable setup with standard 1U machines from a major hardware 
> vendor. Another neat thing is when IBM comes out with Power blades 
> eventually (or possibly Opteron and/or Itanium), they will plug in the 
> same chassis as P4 blades (probably with different power supplies 
> though). So, to answer your question, yes, I believe it's worth paying a 
> little premium for them.
> 
> Goran
> 
> Chris Dagdigian wrote:
> 
> >
> > Rackable denies sending the astroturf message and points to big sales 
> > numbers (and order backlog) as reasons why even aggressive salespeople 
> > would not be out trying to drum up more business. I've been 'joe 
> > jobbed' by spammers using one of my domain names to forge email so I 
> > am open to the possibility that some other sneaky stuff may be going 
> > on by people who are not part of Rackable. Interesting stuff but not 
> > on-topic for this list :)
> >
> > Ok back on topic..
> >
> > You bring up an interesting point about blades that I'd love to get 
> > some discussion going.
> >
> > My take is this:
> >
> > (1) The real value for blade servers is mostly in the management, 
> > monitoring and provisioning software that you get with the blade 
> > platform. When done right it is the software that delivers the actual 
> > savings in terms of operational burden and that is what really tips 
> > the scales over in favor of paying extra $$ for blades.
> >
> > (2) Of the blade platforms that I've looked at I found that I only 
> > really enjoyed working with the IBM Bladecenter and RLX product 
> > offerings. Both had excellent software tools IMHO.
> >
> > What do others think? Is the management and provisioning software just 
> > as important as the form factor and wiring density savings?
> >
> > -Chris
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Philip MacMenamin wrote:
> >
> >> First off, this mail smells bogey, and hats off to the boys who did 
> >> some sherlock holmesing.
> >> Second off, Blades are ALSO cool because they plug into a chassis, 
> >> all very easy, nice and tidy. The fact that they do not have miles of 
> >> cable hanging out of the back is a genuine advantage. I didn't read 
> >> all of this mail too closely (see first point) but there seems still 
> >> to be miles of cable hanging out of the back of these units. So I am 
> >> still a blade convertee...
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bioclusters maillist  -  Bioclusters@bioinformatics.org
> > https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Bioclusters maillist  -  Bioclusters@bioinformatics.org
> https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters
-- 
Marcia A. Goetsch <marcia.goetsch@channing.harvard.edu>
Channing Laboratory
617-525-2765