[THIN] Re: Hardware - Blades, SAN?
- From: "Nick Smith" <nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 08:56:08 +0100
On the blades issue, can anyone explain why teh Dell blades are so slow?
My standard method of pricing stuff up for gueestimate/budget pricing is
to go to Dell's web-site, do the maths, and add 20%. As far as I can
see, the fastest Dell Blade is a P3 1.4Ghz. Am I being stupid or is it
just that Dell is behind the curve? Why would anyone buy a P3 1.4 Ghz
server today?
Nick
_____
From: Jeff Malczewski [mailto:jmalczewski@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: 16 June 2004 21:08
To: 'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: [THIN] Re: Hardware - Blades, SAN?
No, they pay me the same regardless, they just get a higher ROI. But,
they don't seem to care about that. See, it works kinda like this:
No matter how many hours I work, I get paid the same.
So, if they spend $100k to get 10 servers, and they give me three days
to put them in, I work day and night until they're in. If I tell them
"But if you get these other servers here for $150k, I can have them in
in 3 days working only 8 to 5", they say "We'll save the $50k, better
pack lunch AND dinner"
Welcome to my world.
And yes, TCO of server based computing is WAY better. If we still had
900 individual workstations instead of 900 thin clients and a dozen
servers, they'd have to hire another one of me, plus deal with the
maintenance and upgrade costs of the desktops. I was able to get them
to understand that much at least. Thank god, too, because I KNOW they
wouldn't have hired another one of me...
-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Greenberg [mailto:steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:51 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Hardware - Blades, SAN?
I never quite understood the whole salary idea, they still have
to pay you for the time it takes. If you save time on task A, you can
get to task B and in the end they pay you less and get more productivity
for the organziation.
Then again, I have been preaching the TCO of Server Based
Computing for years and very few have card about that either!!
Steve Greenberg
Thin Client Computing
34522 N. Scottsdale Rd. suite D8453
Scottsdale, AZ 85262
(602) 432-8649
(602) 296-0411 fax
steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Taylor, George
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 12:39 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Hardware - Blades, SAN?
I know the feeling, I'm sourlied also......
Are you using Director for your IBM servers?
_____
From: Jeff Malczewski
[mailto:jmalczewski@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 1:31 PM
To: 'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: [THIN] Re: Hardware - Blades, SAN?
Unfortunately, I'm salaried, so they don't care
if it takes me a week to install 20 servers (and it probably would!)
:( *sniff*
-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Greenberg
[mailto:steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:11 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Hardware - Blades,
SAN?
Cost Savings from Blades;
Here is one anecdotal story- I recently
installed 20 new dual XEON blades servers at customer site in 50
minutes!
With the boxes sitting there unopened
and power run to the rack, we started the clock, mounted the chassis,
loaded the servers and brought them up live on the network with LINUX,
stopped the clock and only 50 minutes had gone by. This was using the
RLX product, which by far has the best managment capabilities. If these
were to be Citrix servers, we could have loaded an image on all of them
and joined all servers to the farm in probably another 50 minutes. Note,
this was with full installation, kvm, network, etc complete !!
Steve Greenberg
Thin Client Computing
34522 N. Scottsdale Rd. suite D8453
Scottsdale, AZ 85262
(602) 432-8649
(602) 296-0411 fax
steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Taylor, George
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 12:04 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Hardware - Blades,
SAN?
I'm not sure I can justify it cost wise
compared to 1U servers, but management wise I believe I can. Imagine a
rack with 28 - 1U servers in it...
28 KVM cables
28 Power Cords, hope a power supply
doesn't pop, I can't think of a 1U that has dual PSs, but there may be.
28 Network cables (56 for redundancy)
Just basic cable management would be a
nightmare. You've now used 28 ports on your KVM switch and you've used
56 ports on your network switch (hope your networking guys like you...)
and how many PDUs did you have to mount in that rack?
Now let's use 28 blades, thats 2
chassis.
2 KVM cables
8 power cords
8 network cables, 16 if your networking
guys like you.
28 Fiber Channel cables if your using
SAN based storage
1/2 the rack space used.
Yes, I know servers like the X335 you
can daisy chain the KVM together, but I can't say how it works, we never
got the management module to do that. I VPN into our network from home,
point my browser at the management module and have remote control over
all my blades w/o anything like PCAnywhere or such. I haven't looked at
the math lately, but power consumption is also reduced dramatically.
_____
From: Jeff Malczewski
[mailto:jmalczewski@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 11:49 AM
To: 'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: [THIN] Re: Hardware - Blades,
SAN?
The cost of the FastT-700 and the
associated switch fabric was what I was most interested in.. I'm rather
unfamiliar with SANs and was just curious as to the price of an entire
solution would be if I were to build a new facility from the ground with
this solution instead of individual boxes.. What administrative
benefits have you seen from this as opposed to 5 individual 1U boxes??
It seems to me that the individual servers are still WAY cheaper, so
there must be some real-world justification, just trying to find it..
-----Original Message-----
From: Taylor, George
[mailto:gtaylor@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 1:36 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Hardware - Blades,
SAN?
I can't give you the full price, our
infastructure was already in place, but I can give you an close idea.
Here is what I remember about the latest project, keep in mind that one
bladecenter was already in place as well as the FastT-700 and associated
switching fabric.
The BladeCenter with optical pass-thru,
ethernet switch, bigger power supplies, Accustic Attenuation Module
(muffler), 3yr 24x7x4 support and all associated fiber cables, etc...
about $11K
5 Blades, (Dual 2.8 Xeons, 4gigs, HBA,
40Gig IDE drive) w/ 3yr 24x7x4 about $35K
5 145Gig fiber channel drives for the
FastT about $10K
New Storage shelf and shortwave GBics
for the FastT about $7K
Along w/ that was things like server
CALs, TSM CALs, etc... The whole project HW and SW turned in right
around $80K
_____
From: Jeff Malczewski
[mailto:jmalczewski@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 10:26 AM
To: 'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: [THIN] Re: Hardware - Blades,
SAN?
How many HS20's do you have, what was
the cost for JUST hardware for that solution, including the FastT, and
how much storage do you have available to you??
How many U does the complete solution
take up, including the FastT?
I currently use 6 x330's (Dual P3, 4Gb
RAM, 1U) for my TS farm...
-----Original Message-----
From: Taylor, George
[mailto:gtaylor@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 11:37 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Hardware - Blades,
SAN?
We're implementing this right now. You
give up one of the on-board drives to make space for the HBA. What I've
decided to do is boot from the SAN and use the little on-board IDE drive
for nothing but the swap and temp files. You can get SCSI drives on the
blades, but its an attached cage that takes up a second slot. My
testing using the HS20s, dual Xeons, 4gig ram, booting from the FastT
has shown them to be very robust machines. Currently we only have 1
Optical pass-thru and 1 ethernet switch installed, but you can double up
on both for redundancy if need be. The ethernet switch gives you 4
ports that can be trunked and plays very well with our Cisco 6500 gear,
the throughput is good and from what our networking guys say we are
hardly touching the 4gig limit. The optical pass-thru gives you a fiber
channel from each and every blade, wire management with that much fiber
coming from such a little space is a chore, but does work.
_____
From: SMREKAR, JACK
[mailto:SMREKAR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 4:59 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Hardware - Blades,
SAN?
While we do not have any blades I have
been also thinking about using them for some things. Depending upon the
company you use for your blades I would question if you need to use a
SAN for the storage of your apps. They are coming with upwards of 80
gig drives and I think some of them are now just starting to come with
SCSI drives so you can mirror the drives. I would look at purchasing
them as they are and not to worry about attaching them to a SAN.
Besides I am not sure that you could get a HBA inside one of them to
attach to the SAN.
Jack Smrekar
Appleton Area School District
_____
From: Chris Grecsek
[mailto:grecsek@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 4:31 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Hardware - Blades, SAN?
We're trying to determine which way to
go with our backend hardware for our Citrix farm...I've been hearing a
lot about these blade servers and was wondering if we should setup our
farm on a slew of blades and tie it into a SAN? Seems like the optimal
configuration for a ton of users running basic apps like Office, IE,
Acrobat, etc.
Was wondering if anyone had any feedback
regarding a setup like this - have you done it, advisable, not really,
pro/cons, etc.
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