darlodge

What are you views/comments for Blade Servers etc.

We have to order about 6 servers this year and then a further 10-15 servers next year.

They will all be Dell but I'm weighing up the pro's and con's of the new PowerEdge 1855 Blade Server vs. standalone 1850 or 2650’s.

Blade server
Pro's:
Gadget factor
Only 7U for 10 servers
Lower power output

Con's:
I'm concerned about the possibility of losing a chassis. If this happens then we lose all 10 servers.
Cost is high for the chassis
I think there is a 2 disk limit on each blade (we normally RAID 5)
No one in our support team has ever used a blade server.

Standalone Servers
Pro's:
More resilience
Up to to 5 disks (on 2650)
We know the technology
Easier to work out which server is used for which purpose

Con's:
More power is needed on the UPS
Take’s up more space
More hardware servers to manage

Space is not too much of an issue, but we will have to move around our comms room. Power is not an issue as we are looking at a new UPS.

I still think that standalone servers is the best bet. I don’t feel we will see a benefit, financially or manageability.

What are your views?

Darren

ChrisB

IMO, the two disk limit isn't a big issue when thinking about blades. The HDs are there for OS purposes. I would expect all your data etc is going to be on a NAS or SAN platform and shared between the blades. Heck, some hp blades can even be booted from the SAN.

IWatkins

Looked at both for a recent project. Needed eight servers that really needed to always be on but with ability to have two offline at any one time. All the servers are hooked up to a couple of NAS systems for data.

We simply could not see how we could ensure that would happen with 8 blades in single chassis and the cost of having four blades in each of two chassis were costly so went with 8 x 2650s.

(Hope I have that all correct, I cannot remember all the details as I didn't actually order all the kit, I just write and run apps on them).

Cheers

Ian

darlodge

After weighing up the pros and cons

We ordered a combination of 1U (1850's) and 2U (2850's) servers. Just have to build and configure 13 servers, build 2 racks all mostly before xmas . Looks like its going to be busy.

Darren

ozzy

Then stop wasting your time browsing Scoobynet ... you've work to do

David_Wallis

and stop calling dells 'servers'

darlodge

:P

Darren

druddle

LMAO at David_Wallis......