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The benefits of blade servers

Wednesday, April 30 2008 12:19 PM

Richard George of Intel's server product group explains the benefits of blade servers for companies that are struggling with everything from proliferation of cabling and applications to pressures on staffing.

Hello I'm Richard George from Intel Server Product Group

Today I'd like to talk to you about Blades.

In the data center today we have, some issues... and most issues revolved around, too many applications.

Far too many Apps:
How do I manage them? What versions are they on? How do I take them foward? How do I migrate them?

Then we got another pressure, is to reduce my headcount:
With all the applications that I'm now having to look after, I got too much headcount, too many people looking after them. That again becomes a cost - a cost to the busness, a cost to the data center.

The business is then asking me to implement new projects. And they wanted them done quickly, typically, people want them done in 3 days, whereas its really taking us 3 months or even 3 years in some cases to implement new projects.

Service Level Agreements:
People want a better level of service from IT. And they want that 24/7. 365days a year.

And of course there is just too much customization that I have to do in order just to standstill within the data center...just to keep the business running.

So what are the benefits of blades?

The benefits can be in terms of higher throughput, more user supported, more flexibility within the business. When we actually bring it down into the data center, we see that, actually, it is just a evolution of the industry standard server and it gives us the viable platform. Going forward, there is no risk in deploying the blade.

One of the luxury this brings, is that it reduces the amount of cabling I have in the data centre. Possibly improving my airflow within the cabinet or within the data center itself. Possibly even reducing the amount of hotspots I have in my data center. It also makes it very easy for me to deploy. I can just clone in or add in another blade into my chassis.

It gives me very high density:
I'm getting a lot of compute in a very small footprint. And I'm consuming less power in doing that.It also provides me an excellent ease of management, so I need less people to manage my overall chassis.

And fundamentally, its part of my overall strategy to deliver a compute environment, to the business.