Buy a Blade Server

Posted in Buzz, Servers by admin on October 24, 2007.

If you’re in the market for a blade server, I’m not going to hold your hand through this article. Blade servers are meant for business. They are meant to be run in tandem with other blades within a blade enclosure. Unlike traditional rackmount servers, blades put all the non-essential hardware in the blades’ enclosure, leaving the core computing pieces intact and hot-swappable on the blade itself. (The enclosure provides power, cooling, networking and, often, other management firmware.) As you can see, those in the market for a blade server are either going to want a full blade system (blades + enclosure) or the individual blades.

I won’t try to convince you of one blade brand or another. Why? If you already have a blade enclosure, you already know what you want (you cannot usually put blades of one brand into the enclosure from another.) We feature deals on blades by makers like HP Proliant and IBM Bladecenter.

If you’re starting from scratch and are looking to buy a blade server enclosure, check out our Intel Blade Server Chassis. Inventory includes new blade server enclosures for just over $3000 and refurbished blade server enclosures for under $2500 USD. The IBM is described as

The Intel Blade Server Chassis SBCE is an example of state-of-the-art blade engineering that allows you to greatly expand computing power while reducing management resources. No matter how you configure it, the Intel Blade Server Chassis SBCE was built for efficient management. The system includes a management module that monitors temperatures and controls fan speeds, to maintain an optimum operating environment.

Do your research. Know your needs. When you decide that power, scalability and redundancy are top on your list of priorities, consider buying a blade server system.

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