Blade System Series Part-2

I hope you read Part-1 of this series. Today, we are going to talk about Cisco UCS (Unified Computing System). Cisco Journey in x86 server market was started back in 2009 and now it is giving tough competition to other Vendors in this space.

You will find all kind of fancy articles/Blogs on UCS ,but i would like to make it simple because that's how i understand.

So, lets first understand Building Blocks of UCS and then we will deep dive into architecture/Design and other stuff.

Cisco UCS Components

1. Chassis :-  Cisco offers 6U 5100 series chassis which can house  8 half height or 4 full height B Series Blades. The fully populated chassis would require from 3.5 to 4 KVA power.if you want to accurately calculate power requirement click here to get Cisco UCS Power Calculator. Total of 8 Fans and 4 power supply would provide power & cooling to the systems. from the density perspective 5100 series does not look attractive as other vendors can offer 8 to 16 Blades in single chassis. Click here to get more details.

Lets quickly understand Chassis Architecture with the help of picture.

              Front View of 5100 Chassis

                    

             Rear view

                                  

            

2. Fabric Extender:-   Cisco UCS chassis has 2 I/O slots (remember I/O bays)  from                           my previous post. There is no intelligence build on Fabric Extender and therefore I call it Pass-through device. Dual fabric extender provides total of 80GB converged (LAN + SAN) bandwidth to Blade servers. With the release of Cisco 2^nd Generation UCS, Fabric extender (2208) can scale up to 8x10 GB from each Module which means total of 160GB converged Bandwidth to Blade systems. Each Fabric Extender provides 16 to 32 downlink ports to connect with blade servers via BackPlane and 4 to 8 uplink ports to connect with external world. uplink ports can be populated with 10GB SFP+ Gibic.

3.  Fabric Interconnect :-  To Many interconnects :). Well this is where Cisco is different from other vendors. Fabric Interconnects is the first intelligent hop to which UCS chassis connects to access external LAN or SAN Fabric.Then you would ask, what Fabric extender is doing ? :P.. like i said , Extender is doing nothing - if i make it simple ,its more or less like a port that you see on rack servers the only difference is that you can't plug RJ-45. You need twinax cable to connect Fabric Extender with Fabric Interconnect. so how Cisco offering is different , well answer is simple , with Fabric Interconnect you can connect multiple UCS chassis, and since all short of management is done from this device only, you don't need to think about multiple console. From the overall LAN infrastructure landscape perspective you are replacing distribution layer switches (the switches where your servers would generally connect, remember Top of the rack or Side of the Rack Topology). so in simple words, if you are going with HP , you need to buy Blade switch which will fit into the I/O slot and then buy top of the rack switch (Cisco/HP/Brocade) and then connect with aggregation layer. I hope you are aware of conventional 3 Layer (Distribution/Aggregation & Core) network architecture. You need pair of Fabric Interconnect for redundancy.

Having said that, Cisco offers Following Fabric interconnects 

• 6100 series :-  First generation of Fabric interconnects are available in 2 different Models
• 6120 :- 20 Ports 
• 6140 :- 40 Ports

• 6200 series :- Second generation of Fabric interconnects are available in 

• 6296 :- 96  Ports
• 6248 :- 48 Ports

so lets understand by diagram , how and where this device fits into the UCS system.

as we can see in the diagram, Fabric interconnect is the first device where UCS chassis is connecting with Twinax cable. There are no additional cable for FC, because all the traffic between UCS chassis and Fabric interconnect is converged (FCOE) which mean single cable is used for Fiber and Ethernet packets.unlike traditional servers where you need additional cable to FC. Depending on the customer requirements and scale of deployment , you can make a decision to isolate Ethernet & FC traffic from Fabric interconnect or continue with converged network for LAN & SAN having said that, i have not shown any connection after fabric interconnect. I will write another article around designing FCOE network in context of UCS and other BladeCenters.

4. UCS Blades :-  Cisco Offers verity of Blades, what makes Cisco different from other vendor is that they offer Extended memory (sales pitch). HP can provide more memory support with G8 series Blades. For more information on Cisco Blade Server offerings Click here.

5. I/O Devices :- Fancy world but its basically NIC & HBA's. All major vendors are now shipping severs with CNA cards. Many people get confused with CNA's , folks its a simple consolidated MicroChip , which has 2 MicroChip built on top of it (1st for NIC- Broadcom , 2nd for HBA - QLogic or Emulax) , These vendors are known, you may find CNA having NIC/HBA MicroChip from other vendors. Very common question is , if its a single integrated Microchip how much bandwidth is  allocated to NIC & HBA, well very simple if its 10GB CNA , 4GB is hardcoded for HBA and rest 6GB is for NIC. I know some people would say.. we will decide this allocation using Hardware based QoS in UCS.. :)... My friend go back and double check.. QoS reserves 40% of 10GB , so you are only left with 60% which is 6GB.

Due to the virtue of server Virtualization , a new trend has been started to consolidate Network/Storage/NIC everything. Having said that, remember those days when you needed 6 NICs on the server and there were no PCI slot available to install additional card. Talk to people  who are working on server virtualization projects, they need 8-10 Nics due to the number of VLANs and traffic isolation for underlying virtual infrastrucutre (VMware FT, vMotion, Storage vMotion, Microsoft CSV, Cluster heartbeat and many more). 

so in simple word , what we need is more I/O interfaces (ports) with less PCI cards or Mezzanine cards. so what is the answer, well build a Mezzanine card and use PCIe functions (SR-IOV) to chop it into smaller pieces and fool OS and Hypervisor . Single Root IO virtualization is huge topic in itself and lots of improvement happening in this space. I am planning to write article purely focused on I/O virtualization.

so what cisco offers , They offer something called "Virtual Interface Card" nick name "Palo Adapter" , its a single chip which can scale up to 256 Nic/HBA depending on the Model. They do offer traditional cards with 4 and 2 ports. complete protofolio is available here.

6. UCS Manager :- last but not the least, this is software component which is built inside fabric interconnect and runs in HA mode. UCS Manager is built on very modular architecture , which is capable of abstracting the Hardware identity. I can write 2 page article on UCS manager but, i think that's not in the scope of this post.

so these are major component which makes Cisco UCS system. Fabric Interconnect/UCS Manager & Palo Adapters requires another post and hopefully you will find some posts around that soon. 

Thanks for the time and I wish you great weekend ahead!

Cheers!!

Pankaj

                  

Blade System Series Part-1

Received lot of requests to write about Blade systems so there you go! The way server technology is evolving, soon Blade Systems will become history and some open server Architecture will be adopted by all Major hardware Vendors. Our discussion is around x86 Blade Systems not power or Sparc.

Facebook & Google are 2 Big examples where Blade systems are not used. They are encouraging Open System architecture. for more details have a look at following articles. 

• http://www.opencompute.org/
• http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2383283,00.asp

I believe Blade systems are going to run Data Centers for another couple of years so no need to worry about it today but its good to keep eyes on future trends and research.

Alright!!.. All Major Hardware vendors (HP/Cisco/Dell/IBM/Sun Oracle etc) offer wide rage of Blade systems with few common or different feature sets. This post will focus on Blade system architecture followed by offerings from different Vendors in subsequent Posts.

Any Blade system you talk about are made of more or less Following components

• Chassis:- Consider this as a empty box with 8 to 10 unit in height which is the building block of the entire system.
• BackPlane :- This component is assembled inside the chassis to provide high speed IO (input/output) path to Blade Server via I/O Bays.
• Bays :- Consider this as a slot  where you can install blades. Bays can be customized to allow full/Half height blades installation or Mixture of both.
• I/O Interconnect Bays :- These are again empty slots where you can install switches (Fiber or Ethernet) to connect Blade Servers with external Fiber or Ethernet networks. unlike rack servers which connects directly to Fiber or Ethernet network. Blade servers connects with High speed BackPlanes  which further connects with I/O Bays - and the switches installed inside I/O bays would allow further connectivity.
• Blades:- Well, its the actual compute power which you install in bays. The reason they are called blades is because its highly dense in form factor and takes very less space. 
• Fan :- No Need to Explain
• Power Supply :- No Need to Explain
• Management Modules :- Consider this as a device which allows you to manage all the above components that we talked about.

too much of text :), I think picture speaks automatically. so lets understand all these component using HP Blade System.

Other vendors follows more or less the same architecture except Cisco. Having Management Module and I/O switches in every chassis increases Management as well as cabling that's why Cisco splits Management Module & I/O switches from the chassis. They further merge management Module into the I/O switch itself to reduce number of devices. This design increases efficiency by sharing I/O switches with multiple chassis , which is not possible when switches are mounted inside the chassis. so lets understand this design with examples.

• Consider 2 Cisco Chassis
• Consider 2 Other Chassis which follows integrated I/O switch & Management architecture

• For Cisco , you need only 2 I/O switches (Redundant) , you don't need Management modules as its integrated with I/O switches.
• For other you need 4 (2 in each for redundancy) + 4 Management Modules (redundant)

This is just an example , you will find more detailed comparison in upcoming posts. 

Next Post is about Cisco UCS Blade system followed by other Vendors!!


Cheers!!

Pankaj

Battle Beyond Virtualization Part-1

With the release of VMware vCloud Suite 5.1, The new war has kicked off in comprehensive Management/Monitoring/Automation and Orchestration space by Microsoft & VMware. VMware released 5.1 after Microsoft announced Windows 2012 with all new exciting features. VMware answer to MS release was to discontinue RAM based licensing. Yes correctly heard, VMware is back to CPU based licensing.

VMware did more  they added features like storage vMotion, Hot Add, Fault Tolerance and vShield Zones to the vSphere 5.1 Standard Edition with no extra charge. These features were previously available in more expensive editions. VMware also added their DR tool vSphere Replication to Essentials Plus and higher editions with no extra charge

Having said that lets evaluate Microsoft & VMware offerings in private cloud space. Let’s first take a look at Private cloud attributes by Microsoft. This was presented during WPC 2012 in June. I am going to evaluate Both Vendors on these attributes.

1. Pooled Resources:-

This is primarily about resource aggregation & maintains sufficient resources to fulfill    any on demand request. So what is the definition of resource? is it just limited to compute? 

Nope...we are talking about pooling storage/Network & Security Stacks as well. 

Microsoft: -

Microsoft resource pooling is primarily done at SCVMM level where you can define pools of Hyper-v Cluster, IP/MAC address, Storage & VIP with load Balancers. New service Modeling has been introduced which is being seen as a good value proposition while defining service types/catalog etc. Hyper-v Cluster can scale up to 64 Nodes which I think will give you massive aggregated CPU & RAM capacity however resource aggregation is still not modular. Following diagram shows logical representation of aggregated/Pooled resource which is called Cloud Object in SCCM 2012

VMware:-

VMware has different strategy, they further abstract virtual resources and aggregate those into something called vDC (Virtual Data Centers).  RAM/CPU/Network & Storage is aggregated at Virtual center level and called as vDC further those vDCs are aggregated as resource at vCloud Director. vCloud directory has several other roles which is not in the scope of today’s discussion. Following diagram shows Logical representation of resource aggregation in VMware.

Conclusion: - I think Microsoft solution is good for SMB Customer’s because of single layer aggregation whereas VMware can scale up and produce massive pooled resources, which makes it suitable for Enterprise customers and service providers. Although VMware only supports cluster size up to 32 Nodes however due to 2 layer aggregation they can produce huge capacity.

2. Self-Service

Self service capability is a critical business driver that enables members of an organization to become more agile in responding to business needs with IT capabilities to meet those needs in a manner that aligns and conforms with internal business IT requirements and governance. This means the interface between IT and the business are abstracted to simple, well defined and approved set of options that are presented as a menu in a portal or available from the command line. The business selects these services from the catalog, begins the provisioning process and is notified upon completion, the business is then only charged for what is actually used. 

Microsoft: -

Microsoft offers self-service portal along with SCVMM. SSP runs as web service and can be installed on VMM server however Microsoft recommends that you should install it on separate machine to have better performance.

VMware: -

VMware offers self-service portal along with vCloud Director, which does more or less what Microsoft SSP can do. I have evaluated both Vendors on few parameters which I think are essential.

Parameter	Microsoft	VMware
Design Workflow	Yes	Yes
Role Based Provisioning	Yes	Yes
Catalog Templates	Yes	Yes
Extensible	Yes	Yes
Integration with Orchestration	Yes (Works well with Opalis)	Yes
Allows partners to extend functionality	Yes	Yes

Conclusion: - No significant difference. I think both offerings are equally good.

I hope this post was informative. I will talk about other attributes in Next post..

Cheers!!

Pankaj

Manage unstructured Data

I hope you had great Weekend..

Today i am going to talk about unstructured data.. I know most of you are already aware of what kind of Data i am talking about...

Well i am talking about Data which is not stored in rows and column format (Typically Database format) - Well you can find 100 different definition for the same , but in summary this is what 
it is.

 i am talking about following types of files

• Text Documents
• Media files
• Flash Files
• JPEG/JPG images and several other files which you can think of

Typically such files are hosted on either file servers or Share Points (Microsoft Encourage Share Point based file sharing), I don't understand the reason but let's not get into that :).

There are plenty of solutions available to store such information but this discussion is around file servers.

Any Business vertical you talk about , You are going to see file server footprint with huge Data. 

let me summarize some of the challenges that customers would typically face if they have large file server infrastructure.

• Access & Right Management :-  This is one of the pain area, There is no built in intelligence in Windows , rather NTFS which can help you to correctly define Access/Delegation/Rights Model for distributed organizations. Windows Admins would typically work with 100 different consoles to Manage permission/rights.
• Search & Report :- How many times you have tried to write PowerShell/VisualBasic script to find who has what permission on which folder ? I am sure we all have done that :)

• Backup & Restore Permissions :- What if you are just asked to restore permission not just complete data ? , 

• Migration of Data :- Robocopy & FSMTs and there are many more not a big challenge right ? , but yes it is a challenge when we working on large File Server Migration/Consolidation projects.

Having said all above, Let me propose you some Enterprise class solutions which can help you to great extent if you are managing large File server infrastructure. 

I am sure some of you might be using it already or may be having some other solution in place. 

• VaronisDatavantage:-http://www.varonis.com/products/datadvantage/windows/index.html
• Quest Security Explorer :-  http://www.quest.com/security-explorer/

I hope this post was informative.

Cheers!!

Pankaj

Improve SLA on EOS or EOL Hardwares

This post is useful for People Managing large Data centers and have some server instances running on Old hardware (EOL or EOS). if you think you don't have, Please re-look at your server inventory or CMDB database :).

so what is the risk associated ? , Well if server Hardware dies due to any reason You just can't meet server uptime SLA - Why ? some of you may say.. well our backup policy is really good, we will arrange New/Old hardware and restore :).. so far it sounds really good. Let me ask you this , How Many times you were able to restore system state backup on different Hardware ? :)... I know the percentage is fairly low because of not underlying Hardware but the Operating System (Windows guys are main victim of this)

so what is the solution:-

• Simple Solution is to refresh the Hardware , but have no budget left :) - Very common

• Virtualize the server :- Excellent Idea, but what if Application running on top of it is resource hungry.

• 1:1 Virtualization :- I think this approach can help you to some degree in re-mediating Hardware failure and at the same time Application can get same level of resources due to 1:1 ratio. I know you may see some upfront investment but that's not true because standalone Hypervisors are Freely available.

Just to Conclude , We are abstracting the Hardware layer so that in event of Hardware failure we can replace it with any Make/Model. One of my friend asked me , what if the server VHD/VMDK is sitting on Local disk and the Disk fails... Very good Question.. Well Hardware abstraction is going to give you mobility which does not mean you would stop talking backup of the server. But now Backup is different , its not the whole system state , its a Backup of a file (VHD/VMDK) - which has server and installed application.. isn't it. Restore of single file is easy and faster than complete system state backup with 1000s of files.

so.. what will happen in event of Hardware failure.. This is what you need to do

• Bring new/old Hardware.
• Installed Standalone Hypervisor.
• Restore the VHD/VMDK
• Power on the VM (You may need to restore some. incremental files depending on the Backup Policy.

I hope this is informative.

Cheers!!

Pankaj

Whats New in Hyper-v 2012

Folks,

Microsoft has released consolidated document talking about all new features in Hyper-v 2012. 

https://gaddisevents.sharefile.com/d/s1520f8121a742128

Windows 2012 Introduction, free Guide is available at following link

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9811411

I am digging into all new features, so far it appears to be average , will share the findings and observation soon.

Cheers!!

Pankaj            

Server Sizing.. was really easy Part-2

I hope first Part of this series was informative and it may help you at some degree. In this post I am going to discuss about Virtual Host Sizing. You can find tons of information on this topic on Web however what I really don’t find is the consolidated view/approach. I am going to make this as simple as possible and hope this may help you.

Having said that, let’s get started. First of all you need to know what are the pre-requisites before you start sizing for Virtual Hosts.

·         Pre-requisites

      Identify workloads/Servers which can be virtualized.

      Peak Hour/Average resource usage (CPU/Memory/Network/Disk).

      Resource usage report for 1 Month at least.

      Consolidation ratio (How many servers are going to share the Hardware)

      Ad-hoc capacity demand

Well there may be several other factors to consider which I am going talk about later in this post.

So how to know what may be/ may not be virtualized, what is the current/peak hour utilization & Average utilization for the period of time.  Let’s talk about it one by one.

      What can be virtualized: - Tons of case studies and guidelines are available on web from VMware/Microsoft/Citrix etc. Question is , is there any thump rule which can help me to categories workload which are potential candidates for virtualization even when I don’t have utilization report with me ? Yes… there is…  some of them are

§  Infrastructure servers (AD, DNS, DHCP, Print Server, File Servers etc.)

§  Web Servers or Intranet Portal Servers

§  Utility Servers (WDS, AV Distribution Points, SCCM Distribution Points, Altiris Distribution Point, WSUS etc.)

§  Middleware Servers

Alright, what about other servers like (Application Server, DB Server, and Messaging & Collaboration Server etc.) Well that’s where you need do utilization analysis. Now the challenge is, how do I get utilization report from 1000s of servers spread across multiple location ? Well then you need to think about some automated tool & Solution which can do this work for you. Let’s talk about them. These tools are smart and will tell you which workload is good or bad for virtualization.

Ø  Microsoft MAP Tool Kit:- Microsoft Assessment & Planning tool can help you to discover and collect performance/resource utilization from multiple servers.

Ø  VMware Capacity Planner: - Well, I am not big Fan of Capacity Planner because you rely on VMware to do Analysis for you and publish report on the Dashboard. But many of you would like it.

Ø  Platespin Recon: - Excellent tool for Analysis and reporting, I prefer using Recon.

Ø  IBM cDAT :- Although I have not used it but I have heard good feedback for this product. Worth trying it…

You may find some other tools/solution on web however I may not comment on those as I have not used them.

Alright, so what Next… Well now you have complete Data to process and make a decision on size.  If Data collection and analysis was properly done you should have following Data with you.

Ø  Total Number of servers which can be virtualized

Ø  Total CPUs allocation and actual usage on servers which are identified as virtual candidates.

Ø  Total RAM Allocation and actual usage

Ø  Disk Size on Servers (SAN/DAS)

Ø  IOPS

Ø  Network Bandwidth usage

   

So let’s put some data and try to understand by example.

                  

Ø  Total Number of servers which can be virtualized -  Assume 100

Ø  Total CPUs allocation and actual usage on servers which are identified as virtual candidates – 200 Cores (Assuming 2 Core per server)

Ø  Total RAM Allocation and actual usage – 1600 GB (Assuming 16GB per server)

Ø  Disk Size on Servers (SAN/DAS) – 6000GB (Assuming 60GB per server)

Ø  Network Bandwidth usage – (10000 MBPS, 100 MBPS per server)

Ø  Consolidation Ratio = 1:10 (Just an example)

So for 10 virtual Machine the total capacity I need is as follows

Ø  CPU 2x10 = 20 Cores (Sizing on actuals , in real world although server has 2 cores allocated to it but peak hour utilization is just 1 cores of even half)

Ø  RAM 16GB x 10 =  160GB (Again you need to look at peak Hour utilization and adjust it accordingly with some buffer)

Ø  Disk 60x10 = 600GB (put some buffer for Page file & Swap space

Ø  Network 100x10 = 1000MBPS (Gig Adapter)

Having said that, the size of the Box will be

                    CPU = 2 Socket - (16 Core each)

                   RAM = 164GB

                   Disk = 600GB (Add buffer)

                   NIC = Dual Port 1gig

And then add 10/20 % Extra capacity for sudden burst depending on your budget and do think about Hypervisor penalties (Hyper-v guys would know what I am talking aboutJ)

When you are planning for HA or on demand provisioning you need to think about failover and spare capacity as well.

This topic is really huge and you can hear lot of debates on sizing but I believe this post can help you to some extent.

I will talk about some of the other factors to consider in upcoming post on virtualization planning…

Wish you all good weekend!!!

          Cheers!!

          Pankaj

Server Sizing..was really easy Part-1

I hear this word very frequently "How do i size my server Hardware"- well folks that's the tricky one!!... Not to forget , Sizing for Virtual Hosts depends on lots of other factors so we will talk about that later :).. lets talk about standalone servers as of now.


some guidelines before we deep dive into this topic 

• correctly proposition CPU & RAM - You may find people sizing single CPU with 96GB of RAM
• Prefer high density CPUs to save on Hosting Cost sometimes Licensing cost and at the same time you have multiple cores on single socket - (AMD Processor are really good if you are looking for high density CPU cores on single socket - it can go up 16 Cores single Socket , isn't that Amazing!!) 
• Always look for cache size
• Form Factor is another Point to consider
• Always look for Flash Based Raid Controllers instead of Battery Based
• Ensure you have sufficient expansion slots to scale out if needed in future.
• Ensure you take KVM license with Virtual Media support else you will be in problem if you are doing remote installation. Vendor would generally give you basic license which allows OOB (out of Box) access.
• Budget (Most important)

Alright!!! - After all above take a look at following points as well

so what Next i should do :-

• Understand Application architecture
• If your application is CPU or Memory Intensive
• How Many Disk IOPS you need
• Kind of Raid Level you need for OS and Data Drives
• Whether the application is web Based or Client/Server Architecture Based
• What will be the peak hour Network usage

Now, you may ask how to get all this information ? Well.. Most of it would be available with application vendors.

Now lets talk about what can enable you to properly size the hardware whether you have above information or Not.

• for Microsoft Apps (Exchange/SQL/AD/SharePoint etc) - you can get Microsoft Sizing tool on web or its Bundled with application package.
• Oracle/DB2 - There are again sizing tools available on respective vendor website.
• For SAP instances :- This is the tricky one.. SAP provides QuickSizer tool to size Hardware for SAP instances - (Not freely available you need to be SAP partner and provide all project details before they allow you to use QuickSizer)

Apart from all above :- Most of the Hardware Vendors would provide you tools to do sizing. HP/Dell/Cisco/IBM - They all have sizing tools available on their respective sites and the good part is that, these tools are intelligent enough to understand application Architecture. Download some of them from following link and keep them handy.. :)

• http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ActiveAnswers/Secure/71110-0-0-0-121.html

• http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/alliances/en/sizing?c=us&l=en&cs=555

• https://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/sizing/sizingguides.jsp

Hope this was informative....wait for Part-2

Cheers!!

Pankaj

  

Form Factor.. Is it really Difficult ?

Many a times its difficult to decide on form factor of servers, Folks working on DC Migration/Build/Consolidation projects would generally ask you , "What Kind of server i should suggest to customer" , Well it depends on Multiple factors.. and not very easy to proposition correct Made/Model/Density as per business requirements. People end up with High Density Blade centers where Rack server would have met the requirement and vice-versa. Following are some of the tips which can help you decide whether i should propose Blades or Rack Servers.

Propose Rack Servers When :-

•  Branch Office and Small Data Rooms -Because Blade Center will take 8 to 10 Units depending on Make/Model with Power requirement from 3.5 KVA to 5 KVA with High Cooling requirements and you may not have such infrastructure at remote sites.

•  Large DAS (Direct Attached Storage) Required - Generally Blade Servers are built on High Density Architecture and may not have more than 4 Slots for HDD. 

•  More than 4 CPU Socket required - Majority of Blades would come with 2 or 4 sockets depending on Half/Full Height , You may have a workload which requires more than 4 sockets to operate.

• 4. Serial/USB/ Port Needed for Dongle connection or extenal device connection - Important factor to consider when you have App License on serial Device or USB device.

Propose Blade Servers When :-

•  Space and facility Consolidation - Major driving factor to save cost on Power/Space/Colling

•  Unified Management :- Generally Blade centers comes with Unified Management Modules to provide centralized Management , Although you can buy third party unified management solution for Rack servers but that's the additional investment.

•  TCO on Power & Cooling - Modern Blade centers are equipped with technology which reduces power and cooling requirements. sometimes if you compare the Hosting cost of the server with actual price of the server itself , Hosting cost will be high. Talk to SunGard or Global Logic or other DC hosting providers :) 

•  Cabling Reduction Requirement :- This is another important driving factor. Typically you will have 5 Cables running out of rack servers (1 for iLO/dRack , 2 for Production Network , 2 FC cables for SAN connectivity if SAN storage is required), Number of LAN cable may increase depending on traffic separation and other factor. Blade Servers IO is typically  consolidated and it uses High density BackPlane inside the chassis to communicate with edge switches. HP c7000 can provide 40GB LAN & 32GB SAN connectivity with merely 8 Cables to 16 Half height blades or 8 Full height, Cisco UCS further reduces the cable requirements by 50% as compare to HP (If you are using pass-throughs then no benefits on cabling sure :)) . Having said that if you don't want your data center to look at a "Forest" then cable reduction is important.Look at the picture below if you don't trust me

•  Stateless Server Requirement  :- Lets first Understand what is "State" , it means Identity of the servers Hardware which includes (UID, MAC Address & WWPN Number if it has HBA) - This state is used to define server access to network Layer and storage layer. Now think of a scenario where server Hardware dies and you got Brand new box.  well.. you as server admin have to provide new state of the server  to Network & Storage folks so that that can make changes at their end  access to Storage & Network can be restored. This all requires time (typically 4 to 6 Hrs - this does not include hardware landing/Racking Stacking in DC). Business can't afford 4-6 Hrs of downtime for Mission Critical workload therefore they need some solution to abstract this so called state from the hardware..... well and answer is you got it :) correct!! if not contact me.

•  Fast and Dymanic provisioning - Last but not the least, today we are talking about end to end provisioning of servers in 5 Minutes to 1 Hrs. Its not Possible until you have Mobility & Hardware abstraction. Blade centers are capable of doing all this.

I hope this post was informative, and may help you to some degree.

Next Post :- I am going to write about different  Hardware offerings from HP/Dell/IBM/Cisco...