A sharp choice.
A blade server is one of those terms that one hears dropped casually now-a-days. What does it really mean? Let us dissect the term ‘Blade Server’. For one, it is a server. So, it obviously has a good processing power, good memory. What is ‘good’ is of course dependent on when you read this. If you read this 2 years from the date of publishing this blog your ‘good’ is going to be vastly different from the ‘good’ of today (Sep, 2010). If you had a time machine on which you decide to travel backwards in time in order to read my blog, then your standard for ‘good’ might be different. Of course, travelling backwards in time just to read this blog sounds like a boring thing to do…I would suggest you try out other things too like having an invigorating conversation with Birbal or being the first to reach the south pole, or whatever it is that you fancy. Hmm, you wouldn’t be able to read my blog in the past anyway since I wouldn’t have published it!!
Coming back to the present, we’ve said that a blade server is a server, which sounds like a no-brainer anyway. The other thing about blade servers are that they are very compact, which is where the blade part of it comes into play. They are so compact that where only 42 servers could be put on a rack, in the past, now around 128 can be placed.
Blade servers also save on power. Let’s see how. Blade servers are packed into something called a ‘Blade Enclosure’ . The blade enclosure provides the power to all the servers in the enclosure. All chassis power switching balances power load and requirements across the component blades’ demands. The technology ensures that power isn’t wasted running underused blades, but in times of high demand there is sufficient power available. This consolidation of power at one point leads to power savings.
Other advantages of blades are hot swapping and reduction in cabling.
In Conclusion, each blade server is a complete computer, albeit stripped of some functionality. A typical computing blade will contain one or two CPUs with supporting chipset on a specialised motherboard, RAM, and little else.
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