What is a Blade Server?
A blade server is a compact computer server, designed to work together with a blade or server rack. A computer server is a computer designed to provide services and support to multiple users in a network. Each individual blade is a tightly compressed computer processing unit. The blades are designed to work with the rack, as they do not have their own power, cooling or protective covers. A blade rack looks just like a metal bookcase. The blades can be inserted horizontally or vertically, depending on the design selected for the rack. All power and network cables are connected to the rack, and not the individual blades. This is due to the built-in connectors that fit exactly into the back of the blade server. Many racks have a glass front door to keep out the dust and have powerful cooling fans built into the top and bottom. These fans are used to keep the temperature at the appropriate level for all the blade servers. Blade racks are usually stored in a server room, which has built-in
Listen to this 10 minute audiocast on your computer, your iPod or your favorite MP3 player. 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.. A few years ago, blade servers were only found in large data centers. Today, however, they represent the fastest growing segment of the server market for mid-sized businesses. In this broadcast, we’ll explain what a blade server is, how it’s different from a box or rack-mounted server, and how it has moved from the world of big business to become a mainstream server solution for small to mid-sized businesses. We’ll also provide a case study to illustrate how one mid-sized company sucessfully deployed blade servers. You’ll learn why they initially chose blades, what issues they faced during deployment and their recommendations for other companies who are considering a blade server deployment. Download your audio seminar now.
, designed for high density. Whereas a standard rack-mount server can exist with (at least) a power cord and network cable, blade servers have many components removed for space, power and other considerations while still having all the functional components to be considered a computer. A blade enclosure, which can hold multiple blade servers, provides services such as power, cooling, networking, various interconnects and management-though different blade providers have differing principles around what should and should not be included in the blade itself (and sometimes in the enclosure altogether). Together these form the blade system.
The Blade Device: A Blade device is a specialized computer server, which can be dynamically programmed to run multiple operating systems, in a seemingly simultanious manner. This concept is known as “Virtualization”, and allows CSU administrators to run 10 to 12 instances of virtual servers, each offering different applications, on a single peice of hardware. Each Blade server will have 4 CPUs, up to 32 Gb of RAM, and 1.6 TeraBytes of storage capacity. The Slice: A Slice is a single instance of a virtual server. One Slice could be a Windows 2003 server, another could run Windows 2000, still others could be running Linux. The Wedge: A Wedge is a server application running on a Slice. Examples could include a SQL server or an Apache web server. The Sliver: A Sliver is a web page or a Wiki running on a Wedge. Think of it this way, we could have a dozen Wikis or Web pages, separate applications and several databases, all running under different operating systems, but they are all on the sa
