| Product type |
Rack-mount blade servers
|
| Performance profile |
Scalable to 4-way SMP, with 8-way and above available in other product families
|
| Functionality profile |
Choice of AMD, IBM POWER or Intel processors. Good range of RAS options, storage modules and redundant switch modules for Fibre Channel and Ethernet connectivity
|
| Usability profile |
Blade server technology in itself makes for ease of deployment, with a good range of management tools available to handle both the hardware and software that makes up a BladeCenter solution
|
| Price |
From £1,812 for 14-slot BladeCenter chassis; 2-way Intel-based blades start at £1,084, 2-way Opteron- and POWER-based blades start at £1,469
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The IBM BladeCenter solution includes a choice of chassis products for both commercial and large-scale telecommunications deployment. You can then pick from an even wider range of server blades with AMD, Intel and IBM POWER processors, plus storage modules and both Ethernet and Fibre Channel switch modules.
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High-availability options such as redundant power supplies and cooling can be built into the BladeCenter chassis, and there’s built-in redundancy at the server level with 14 blade slots on the standard 7U BladeCenter chassis.
The blades themselves can have up to four Intel processors, with support for up to 16GB of memory per server on the larger Intel products plus up to 293GB of onboard hard disk storage. The 2-way PowerPC-based blades can accommodate up to 4GB of memory and can be configured in the same chassis alongside the Intel-based products.
A range of server hardware and cross-platform software management products is available from IBM, including automated provisioning software.
| Product type |
Industry standard rack-mount servers
|
| Performance profile |
Up to 8-way SMP with a choice of 32-bit and 64-bit processors and plenty of RAM for memory-intensive applications
|
| Functionality profile |
Can be used to host a range of operating system and application software
|
| Usability profile |
Not as flexible or quick to deploy as blade alternatives, but intelligent tool-free design makes for ease of maintenance; you also get a good choice of local and remote management options
|
| Price |
Price depends on exact model and configuration: from around £700 for the 1U ProLiant DL320, to £5,000 plus for the 8-way ProLiant DL760
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DL stands for 'Dense-Line', and there's a wide range of rack-mount servers in the ProLiant DL family. The tiny 1U DL320 has just one Pentium 4 processor, while the 8-way Intel Xeon based DL760 is a 7U device. Other 2-way and 4-way products can also be specified with a choice of both Intel and AMD processors, up to 64GB of ECC memory, Gigabit Ethernet connectivity and RAID-protected storage.
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HP is renowned for its build quality, and it also offers a range of high-availability options such as redundant power supplies and fans. Integrated lights-out remote management also comes as standard on all DL models, with HP’s own Insight Manager software another option bundled with every system.
The smaller models in the DL range are designed mainly for Web-server front ends and distributed file and print applications. For larger infrastructure simplification projects, the bigger rack-mount products, with four or more processors and additional memory space, are the ones to go for. HP is also a leading vendor of blade servers with its ProLiant BL family.
Other servers
|
| Vendor |
Highlights |
Blades |
Rack-mount |
64-bit |
|
| Evesham Technology |
Smaller UK-based company, mainly selling Intel-based servers to the SME market |
no |
yes |
yes |
| Dell Computer |
One of the top server vendors worldwide, with an extensive range of Intel-based solutions for companies of all sizes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| Fujitsu Siemens |
Another of the top-tier vendors, with a highly scalable range of Intel-based rack-mount and blade servers |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| Sun Microsystems |
Sun mainly sells its own UltraSPARC IV-based servers running the Solaris OS, but recently added x86 servers and Linux to its line-up |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| Supermicro |
Best known as a motherboard vendor, Supermicro also sells a range of Intel-based rack servers with up to four processors |
no |
yes |
yes |
| Tatung |
Based in Taiwan, Tatung sells Intel- and AMD-based rack-mount and blade servers throughout Europe |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
