 - A blade server is a server chassis housing multiple thin, modular electronic circuit boards, known as server blades. Each blade is a server in its own right, often dedicated to a single application. The blades are literally servers on a card, containing processors, memory, integrated network controllers, an optional fiber channel host bus adaptor (HBA) and other input/output (IO) ports.
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Blade servers allow more processing power in less rack space, simplifying cabling and reducing power consumption. According to a SearchWinSystems.com article on server technology, enterprises moving to blade servers can experience as much as an 85% reduction in cabling for blade installations over conventional 1U or tower servers. With so much less cabling, IT administrators can spend less time managing the infrastructure and more time ensuring high availability. Each blade typically comes with one or two local ATA or SCSI drives. For additional storage, blade servers can connect to a storage pool facilitated by a network-attached storage (NAS), Fiber Channel, or iSCSI storage-area network (SAN). The advantage of blade servers comes not only from the consolidation benefits of housing several servers in a single chassis, but also from the consolidation of associated resources (like storage and networking equipment) into a smaller architecture that can be managed through a single interface. A blade server is sometimes referred to as a high-density server and is typically used in a clustering of servers that are dedicated to a single task, such as: - File sharing
- Web page serving and caching
- SSL encrypting of Web communication
- The transcoding of Web page content for smaller displays
- Streaming audio and video content
Like most clustering applications, blade servers can also be managed to include load balancing and failover capabilities.
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Getting started with blade servers |
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Learn more about Blade servers |
| Blade server popularity cools: The bloom may be off the rose for blades. Management and heat issues have cooled demand for blade servers, according to IT pros. |
| U.S. Census reins in data center sprawl: The U.S. Census Bureau and an Alexandria, Va.-based project management firm gutted an extremely complex data center and got on board with blade servers. |
| Users buying, configuring servers for virtualization: Virtualization deployment has had a substantial impact on server purchases and memory provisioning this year, says a SearchDataCenter.com survey. |
| Blades cutting a slightly larger share of server market: Four years after their inception, blade servers may finally be emerging as a viable enterprise-class platform for corporate data centers. |
| State of the blade: Report from the Server Blade Summit: According to attendees at the Server Blade Summit last week, IT shops are standardizing on single vendor platforms for consolidation. Analysts say IBM is leading the pack. |
| Learning Guide: Blade Servers: This learning guide will help you navigate the burgeoning field of blade servers: when to buy them, how to cool them, and what to expect as the technology matures. |
| Heat relief for data centers using blades: As data center managers stew over the heat problem created by blade servers, vendors are pitching new technologies that will make heating issues a thing of the past. |
| Data center purchasing survey 2009: Budgets flatten, clampdown on costs: As IT shops wrestle with the economic downturn, some have bought new servers to enhance virtualization deployments but have clamped down on other IT costs. |
| Developing a data center blade server strategy: Considering implementing blade servers in your data center? Take a look at the benefits and drawbacks to blade servers. |
| SearchDataCenter.com Products of the Year 2009: SearchDataCenter.com invites you to participate in its annual Products of the Year award nomination process. Nominate your favorite product or your company's product. |
| Quiz: Blade servers: We've created this quiz to test (and refresh!) your blade server knowledge. Think you know it all? There's only one way to find out...! |
| Liquid cooling: Energy bills making your data center hot under the collar? Liquid cooling may be the answer you're looking for. |
| Next generation blade servers: Blade servers continue to become more important and popular in data centers. |
| CONTRIBUTORS: |
Sonia Weaver |
| LAST UPDATED: |
08 Dec 2008
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