Five Misunderstandings in Blade Server Technology

Mission 1: The chassis and the middle board will become "short board". Now, the accusation of cooling and power supply for the blade server has been reduced. Instead, the chassis and the middle board have become new targets. . At the CIO seminar held at a website earlier this year, some users pointed out that the chassis and the middle board (or backplane) will become the "short board" of the blade server, because all the server blades (blades) and switches are connected. /Inserted in the middle plate, once the middle plate is damaged, the consequences are unimaginable, and the chassis has similar problems. This concern is largely due to subjective inference.

First of all, the chassis is a shell, and its possibility of damage is very small, there is nothing to worry about. What really needs to be concerned is the midplane of the blade server. In the medium-board redundancy design, IBM and HP methods are different. The midplane of the IBM BladeCenter blade server has 14 signal and power connectors on the upper and lower sides of the vent, and the IBMBladeCenter blade server is fully equipped with 7U 14 (7U height, 14 blades).

The midplane of the HP BladeSystem blade server does not use this up and down redundancy design. According to HP engineers, HP's midplane and server blade connectors do not have any electrical indicators between them. The connection is purely electrical connection between the connectors is achieved by the controller, they are dual redundant and can be replaced online. HP engineers pointed out that the BladeSystem's midplane is certainly likely to be damaged, but as a pure connector, the probability is very low, which is the conclusion of the laboratory's full certification, its life can reach hundreds of thousands of times. He pointed out that if the upper and lower redundancy design is adopted, once one side is damaged or not replaced, the redundancy protection is lost and the reliability is reduced. If it is replaced, there is only a downtime, which is a dilemma for the user.

Mission 2: Missing standards lead to being bound by vendors
The issue of standardization is also a hot topic for a long time. Several major blade server vendors have different specifications and standards. For example, IBM provides five chassis, including BladeCenterS, E, H, T, and HT. The mainstream product is BladeCenterE, which is equipped with 7U 14-pieces; H is 9U 14 The film, while H and HT are chassis for telecom and high performance design. HP BaldeSystemc-Class series blade servers are divided into C3000 and C7000, of which C3000 is designed for small and medium-sized enterprises, with specifications of 7U 8 pieces; C7000 is 10U 16 pieces. HP C-Series blades have a distinction between full-height and half-height. They are distinguished by AMD and Intel blades. They are two-way server products with a distinction between dual-core and quad-core. Full-height servers occupy up and down 2 slots, mostly Itanium or multi-way servers. So far, they can support 4-way dual-core Itanium or 4-way 4-core Xeon processor blades. In addition, HP offers blade storage and tape drives.

Different specifications and systems make server blades from different manufacturers unable to intermix. From the overall point of view of the market, the lack of standards is not conducive to the formation of scale production, which will affect the cost of blade server production. However, for the user, this does not directly affect the application of the blade server, and the user can achieve rapid deployment, green energy saving, and easy management regardless of which blade server is used.

The user investment is not protected in the future. For example, if the user only purchases a small number of blade servers, when the user's business reaches a certain scale, perhaps 2-3 years later, the user will not find the chassis at that time. Compatible server blades, resulting in waste. In fact, this is also a must-have "crime". For the scale of users, you can choose BladeCenterS or BaldeSystemC3000, or simply choose domestic blade servers. These blades are designed to take into account the size and usage of SMEs. Take the BaldeSystem C3000 as an example, the design is 7U8. 8 blades are not a large amount. For small and medium-sized enterprises, multiple servers are needed for applications such as mail, file sharing, web, human resources, and finance. In addition, some key applications, such as database applications, need to adopt full height. The server, plus the storage, tape drive, etc., so there is no need to worry about the scale.

Myth #3: Virtual connections are equivalent to virtualization
Virtual connections for blade servers, HP is called VirtualConnect, and IBM uses BladeCenterOpenFabricManager software to achieve similar functionality. The so-called virtual connection refers to when a server blade. For example, when A fails, it needs to be replaced with a redundant D blade in idle state. With the support of virtual connection, D can directly replace A. Any related network and storage parameter configuration need not be reconfigured, and the server blade can be replaced. To achieve "plug and play", the management between the server blade and the network, storage becomes simple and transparent, this is the virtual connection.

The industry often confuses blade server virtual connections with virtualization. It should be noted that the blade server does not support virtual connections unconditionally under any conditions. A blade server can support virtual connections only if it uses HP's network modules (switches for blade servers). If the user chooses a network module from Cisco, Brocade, or Foundry, the blade server does not support virtual connections unless these modules have additional functionality.

Lesson 4: Blades change user network structure
Since each server blade in the chassis is connected by network modules (switches), these network modules are also optional. However, compared with the rack server, after adding a network module (switch) layer between the server blade and the LAN switch, will this increase the difficulty of system management? In addition, whether the blade server network module will become a new bottleneck.

The technical engineer pointed out that in most cases, the blade server network module will not become a bottleneck because it has many options, can support Gigabit Ethernet, and can also support 10G, FC, Infiniband, etc. Its network module also has the function of a 2/3 layer switch. In addition, for special applications, blade server transparent transmission is also possible. For example, the Ethernet pass-through module (PassThrough) provided by the HP C Series provides a straight-through LAN connection for the blade server. A one-to-one network card for patch panel connections provides non-blocking network connectivity.

This flexible networking capability of blade servers gives users more choices. In addition, the problems related to the expansion, such as the connection application of multiple network cards, can also meet the needs of the application through the corresponding expansion modules.

Mission 5: Blade server cooling problem is outstanding
In the design of the blade server, heat dissipation is a key issue, but don't mistake it: the blade server will generate more heat. Need to consume more air conditioning and cooling. On the contrary, compared to the same number of 1U rack servers, the amount of cooling required by the blade server has not increased, but has decreased by 25%.

This conclusion is actually not difficult to understand. In the interview, the product manager pointed out that the blade server is not unique in terms of components. The processor, hard disk and memory used by it are no different from the rack server. There is no so-called heat dissipation pressure. And the problem of using a laptop hard drive. In fact, the Blade in the blade server is exactly the same as the rack server.

Blade servers differ from rack servers in that they share power, fans, and chassis. In terms of the number of power supplies and fans, the number of blade servers is reduced, so that it is more energy efficient and the amount of heat generated is also reduced. Although different manufacturers have adopted different cooling solutions, they can meet the needs of blade server cooling. In addition, because the blade server has a relatively closed space compared to the rack server, its heat dissipation is more efficient.