Leveraging Blade Servers
For years, when user demands required additional servers, the IT department would add a physical server box within the data center, as shown in FIGURE 8-2.
FIGURE 8-2 Servers originally required their own chassis, disk, power supply, and fan. They consumed considerable power, took up considerable space, and generated considerable heat within the data center.
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Although the server box met user demands, each box consumed space within the data center and required considerable power.
As the server boxes were outgrowing many data centers, the blade server was born. In short, the blade server, as shown in FIGURE 8-3, is a scaled-down server designed to consume less power and to fit within a rack with other blade servers, while still matching or exceeding the processing potential of chassis-based servers.
FIGURE 8-3 The blade server is designed to fit within a rack with other blade servers. This reduces the server’s physical footprint, makes the server easier to cool, and reduces the server’s power consumption.
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To share disk space, blade servers support network-attached storage (NAS) devices. Blade servers have additional advantages:
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Consume less physical space (footprint)
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Consume less power
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Generate less heat and are easier to cool
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Easy to install and configure