March 14, 2010Pick the right rack or blade server for scale-out computing
Pick the right rack or blade server for scale-out computing
By Khoo Boo Leong | Jul 2, 2009
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PrintRack-mount and blade servers have helped businesses increase IT capacity without excessive energy consumption, cooling requirements and space utilization. Such solutions become all the more critical for businesses involving Web 2.0, cloud or high-performance computing (HPC).
Scale up or scale out
So, choosing the right server that offers the flexibility to scale capacity efficiently as needed by the business is critical. Administrators can add more memory, storage and CPUs to scale up within, for instance, a single tower, rack-mount or blade server, or scale out by adding more servers in a cluster integrating rack-mount and blade servers.
But HP’s recently introduced rack-mount ProLiant SL G6 servers, which are part of its Extreme Scale-Out (ExSO) portfolio, offer many power and cooling capabilities found in blade servers. Nonetheless, there are essential differences that make one a better solution over the other in different environments.
“Before making the purchasing decision, it is imperative for customers to understand what these differences are to better provision for their infrastructure,” said Stephen Bovis, vice-president and general manager of Industry Standard Servers at HP Asia Pacific and Japan.
Rack or blade
Rack-mount servers are designed for ultra-compact vertical arrangement within a rack skeleton or cabinet. This configuration uses floor space efficiently and offers centralized cable and server management.
“However, rack servers are generally designed to work as a logical and cohesive whole but without the tight integration found with server blades, which makes rack servers more flexible in some situations,” said Bovis. “You can run servers from different manufacturers in the same rack enclosure because the servers don't share proprietary components.”
Blade servers offer high-density footprints within a small form factor. Many components – power, cooling and ventilation, networking and other interconnects –have been removed from the servers themselves and are shared among servers within an enclosure. A blade enclosure can be more economical and scales better than typical tower units.
Like a blade server, a rack server configuration not only allows administrators to add servers as needed but also to connect to external storage, such as a network attached storage (NAS) or storage area network (SAN).
Both rack-mount and blade servers offer hot-swappable components that can be replaced without disruption to other units or services in a load-balancing arrangement.
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