From servers to blades
Since we started with our speaking web services about 9 years ago we have grown quite a bit. Growing from a lonely Sun Ultra 5 back in 2000 to about 50 high capacity servers of various kinds today. That’s a whole lot of servers…
Managing that number of servers is not the easiest task, and wow how much space they take.
We have now designed a brand new infrastructure for our future needs based on Linux clusters based on IBM blade centres. We have also invested in a real powerful SAN (Storage Area Network) over the iScsi protocol. A very competitive priced solution compared to Fibre Channel based SAN’s. Almost the same result for only a fraction of the cost. Anyway, going from “normal” rack servers to something like a Blade Centre was not just start working with another server. With our “normal” servers, we are used to configure, plug in network cables, plug in power cord and off you go!
When our brand new 14 slot Blade centre arrived the other day, we noted that it was not just to plug in the power cords. Instead of a usual one, it was a (very large) plug completely unknown to us. But wait! There are some good old fashion power cables! almost… After a call to IBM they kindly advised us to invest in a 1300€ PDU (Power distribution Unit) that was to be connected to 3 phase electricity. To that we could easily plug this “almost normal” power cables to. We understood that this is not just another server; this was a whole new level of computer infrastructure.
Anyway, the new Infrastructure is now up and running and I must say; if you currently have 10+ servers and you plan to grow quite a bit. Invest in blade centres!
And it´s better for the environment too! They are not consuming by far as much electricity (per server) compared to rack ones. Also they does not require as much cooling either. From a management point of view it is brand new world. And EVERYTHING is redundant! I fell like a happy kid. Pretty much the same feeling I experienced the day when my mom upgraded my first computer (the C64) to the brand new Amiga 1000 
Reader Comments
..I was in the same room when we first tested the bladecenter for the first time. And Wow! there is some cooling-capacity as well! The soundlevel when all fans speeded up at full rpm was something like a Concorde taking of from the runway…
Yeah, I think Magnus mentioned something like 80dB