Dell Technologies released telemetry for blade servers earlier this year in the form of the iDRAC Datacenter license. In July, telemetry capabilities were extended to the chassis. Here are the details. Continue reading
Category Archives: Dell – Dell EMC
Are Multi-Node Systems a Better Option Than Blade Servers?
Lately I’ve been having discussions around “futures” with customers and one topic continues to be over ongoing interest. What will blade servers look like with the expectations of CPU TDPs continuing to increase? Looking into the future, it’s very clear that CPUs are going to create an obstacle for blade server users. TDPs are going to grow to the point where “air cooling” may not be sufficient for all workloads. This will force blade server users to make a choice. Continue reading
A Review of Blade Server Market Share
Every quarter IDC publishes market data for blade server vendors. In the past I’ve only covered the top 4 main stream vendors, Cisco, Dell Technologies, HPE and Lenovo. However, I recently came upon IDC’s full list of blade server vendors so I thought it would be good to share.
Comparison of Ice Lake Based Blade Servers
(Updated 4.8.2021) Intel released the embargo on April 6, 2021 lifting the covers to the 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable Processor. As expected, blade server vendors are starting to release details of their offerings based on this new CPU announcement. Below is an updated chart to help guide you to the best blade server for your project. This version includes Intel DC Persistent Memory (Optane).
Dell Technologies Announces Next Generation Blade Server – MX750c
(UPDATED 4.7.2021) Earlier this month, Dell Technologies launched their next generation server line based on the upcoming 3rd Generation Intel Xeon SP processor. Here is what we know.
A Closer Look at the Q3 2020 IDC Blade Server Market Data
Earlier this month, IDC published their Q3 2020 WorldWide Server tracker data showing the top server vendors. in this post, I’m going to dive in and take a closer look at how blade servers are performing including which vendor is leading the blade server market. Continue reading
What is NPAR (Network Partitioning)?
Last week I mentioned NPAR as a feature in most Broadcom like the ones found in the PowerEdge MX740c blade server. I realized although NPAR is nearly a decade old, it may not be well-known by readers, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to break it down for you. Continue reading
Want 400GbE in a Blade Server? Here’s How
A few years ago, the thought of needing multiple 25GbE ports on a blade server was not even a consideration. In fact, I did a survey 6 years ago and got an overwhelming response that only a couple of 10GbE ports was needed for VMware virtualization efforts. Today there is now an option to have 8 x 25GbE ports in a 2 CPU blade server – but there are some things you need to know. Continue reading
A Slick New Way to Get More GPUs on Blade Servers
It should be no surprise that the popularity of accelerators in the datacenter continues to grow. Last year I wrote a blog post on the GPU options for blade servers. At that time, the options were limited to either small GPUs like the NVIDIA T4 or mezzanine based GPUs. The market really hasn’t added anything more in the GPU-on-blade space until now. Continue reading
If You Use PowerEdge Blade Servers You Should Know About This
If you are using Dell blade servers, I may have a little known resource that could help you. Ever heard of the “PowerEdge MX I/O Guide?” If not, I’m not surprised. It was primarily used as an internal resource, but now it’s available to the public. Continue reading