Or, if you're a strictly x86 shop, then you can go to a host of possible vendors to get some x86-based blade servers. For example, IBM offers its eServer Blade Center. This product line also offers a chassis with the ability to add one-way, 2-way or 4-way x86 processor blades. The chassis itself offers 14 bays, which gives you as many as 28 2-way servers in a 7U space, or 84 servers in an industry-standard rack. You can add management software and special-purpose blades, such as KVM (keyboard, video, monitor) blades, switch modules, blowers, etc.
But you can add blades based on the PowerPC processor if you like, so you can mix and match here as well.
These are just samples of the kinds of blades that you can assemble into a pretty powerful stack of server muscle. But there are more advantages.
Tim Dougherty, director of the IBM eServer Blade Center, says that when you're thinking of blades, you should be aware of some of their advantages in re-integrating -- that is, bringing back together -- the data center. In the early 90s, when budgets were fat, he says, departments tended to get their own servers, and tried to run their own IT operations for certain kinds of functions. Then, as budgets tightened (and still are) these servers came back to the IT department. "Blades are the perfect construct to do that," Dougherty says. "They are very easy to set up and deploy, they need fewer people to manage them, and they are far less complex," than standalone servers with networking connections between them. For example, he claims, "you can get 89 per cent fewer cables with these blades, because of the fact that we integrate so much together."
But don't forget that you will need other hardware if you go the blade route. Says Pat Buddenheim, product line manager for the Intel blade product line, "You'll need storage, either a SAN or some NAS. You need to set that up, but a fibre channel switch plugs into the back [of the chassis]."
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