What is a blade server?

Answer 1

Blade servers are self-contained computer servers, 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 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 principal benefit (and general driver towards blade computing) is the limitation that a single U (19" rack unit - 1.75 inches) is the minimum height of any equipment in a 19-inch rack. The most common computer rack form-factor being 42U high, this limits the number of discrete computer devices directly mounted in a rack to 42, whereas blades do not have this limitation. Densities of 100 computers and more are achievable with the current generation of blade systems.

Here is a picture...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/IBM_HS20_blade_server.jpg/300px-IBM_HS20_blade_server.jpg

Answer 2

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, often dedicated to a single application. The blades are literally servers on a card, containing processors, memory, integrated network controllers, an optional fiber channel host bus adaptor (HBA) and other input/output (IO) ports.
Blade servers allow more processing power in less rack space, simplifying cabling and reducing power consumption.
Each blade typically comes with one or two local ATA or SCSI drives. For additional storage, blade servers can connect to a storage pool facilitated by a network-attached storage (NAS), Fiber Channel, or iSCSI storage-area network (SAN). The advantage of blade servers comes not only from the consolidation benefits of housing several servers in a single chassis, but also from the consolidation of associated resources (like storage and networking equipment) into a smaller architecture that can be managed through a single interface.
A blade server is sometimes referred to as a high-density server and is typically used in a clustering of servers that are dedicated to a single task, such as:
* File sharing
* Web page serving and caching
* SSL encrypting of Web communication
* The transcoding of Web page content for smaller displays
* Streaming audio and video content
Like most clustering applications, blade servers can also be managed to include load balancing and failover capabilities.

Answer 3

If you are a small business, then you really do not need to be distracted by all of this. If you have a simple Single Server, with e-mail capabilities and under 20 e-mail accounts and under 20 computer workstations, you are FINE.

I'd hate to see you waste your time and money.

Lots of Small businesses get DUPED into more equipment and services than they need. I've seen some get SDSL service, instead of using the standard ADSL service. It's silly to pay triple, when you don't need it.

What a small business should look at is their Phone service. Yes, their primary phone line should be a normal, and regular, good ol' reliable telephone system. But for a Salesman to make many outgoing calls, they should consider getting Vonage or other Voice Over IP based system for a fraction of the cost. This can save a business some serious CASH.


Figure out what you really need, and get what will best satisfy that need.

Answer 4

A blade server is essentially a housing for a number of individual minimally-packaged computer motherboard "blades", each including one or more processors, memory, storage, and network connections, but sharing the common power supply and air-cooling resources of the chassis. ...

Answer 5

In a data center environment where you have rack mountable equipment, some types of devices (network routers, and switches in particular) offer slide in boards generally described as 'blades" that serve to provide additional ports, interfaces etc.