A new finding from the Dell EMC PowerEdge Engineering identified the Dell EMC PowerEdge M630 blade server as being more efficient and offering lower energy costs than the HPE ProLiant BL460 Gen 9. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Dell
GPUs and Blade Servers – A Good Idea?
UPDATED 9.23.2016 When looking at the blade server market, the options for GPUs are very limited – in fact only a couple of vendors offer them (more on this later.) So you have to question, is it a good idea to put a GPU in a blade server? Let’s review and find out. Continue reading
Which Embedded Management License Do You Need?
Whether you are looking at Dell or HPE blade servers, one important consideration is the type of embedded management license you need. Too often, I’ve heard of blade server users having to go back to a vendor to get a license upgrade because the current version doesn’t do what you need it to. The charts below are designed to help you proactively determine what license is needed prior to making your purchase. Continue reading
VMware Virtual SAN Ready Node on a Blade Server
UPDATED I recently had to determine the best option for a customer from the Virtual SAN Compatibility Guide / Virtual SAN Ready Node guide and was a bit surprised to see only a single blade server vendor listed. When it comes to choosing a server form factor, there are many reasons to choose blade servers, and several reasons not to choose them (see “5 Reasons You May NOT Want a Blade Server – April 2013.”) If you think blade servers will fit for your infrastructure needs, here are a few options to consider.
Blade Server Comparison – June 2016
With the recent release of the Intel Xeon E5 v4 CPUs, I realized it’s been a year since I’ve updated my blade server comparison chart. Below is an updated chart to help guide you to the best blade server for your project. Continue reading
New Study Shows Dell Blades Outperform Cisco UCS
A newly published study by Principled Technologies reports in tests that the Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade environment delivered up to 91.7% greater throughput while running a virtualized OLTP database workload compared to a similarly priced Cisco UCS 5108 blade environment. In addition they found that the Dell environment delivered consistent scaling as blade servers were added versus the performance degradation observed in the Cisco environment.
Dell’s VRTX Gains New Storage Option
As I speak with customers about the Dell PowerEdge VRTX, one of the limits that often gets brought up is the fact that it”only” has 25 x 2.5″ or 12 x 3.5″ drive bays. That is no longer the case. In a quiet release in December, Dell began offering an extra option for VRTX which allows the chassis to connect with up to 2 x external MD storage arrays and share the storage with all servers.
5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Dell Blade Servers
Recently I’ve had to do a lot of “why Dell” presentations and it occurred to me there are a few things about Dell blade servers that many people, including Dell customers, may not know about.
Dell vs Cisco – New Tolly Report (updated)
UPDATED – Tolly Enterprises recently published a new Tolly Report comparing Dell PowerEdge FX2 with Cisco UCS showing results favoring Dell. The 17 page document provides background on each of the product architectures and tests them in four test cases. Continue reading
IDC Worldwide Server Tracker Shows 5.1% Growth in Q3 2015
IDC published their Q3 2015 findings last week, and the results were overall positive. In year over year revenues, the worldwide server market saw revenues increase of 5.1%, or $13.4 billion, the sixth consecutive quarter of growth while shipments grew 4.5%, or 2.49 million units. Specific to blade servers, IDC reported Dell’s blade server revenue grew faster than that of any of the top 5 vendors at 34.8%, however Cisco remained at the #2 blade server market share holder behind HP. Continue reading