blade server

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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.

Getting started with blade servers

To explore how blade servers are used in the enterprise, here are some additional resources:

Learning Guide: Blade Servers: Wondering how much air movement each blade server needs for adequate cooling? This learning guide will help you answer questions such as when to buy blade servers, how to cool them and what to expect as the technology matures.

All-in-One Guide: Data Center Disaster Recovery

Server room cooling choices

Read more about blade server: - Learn on the go: Download our podcast: "What is a blade server? How can it help my small to mid-sized business?" - SearchSystemsChannel.com offers a comprehensive guide for blade server resellers. - In this article Matt Stansberry discusses heat issues in the data center. - Nexcom also makes blade servers and describes some applications.

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