[LINK] Blade servers solve space dilemma

Michael Still mikal at stillhq.com
Wed Feb 11 14:49:51 AEDT 2009


Michael Skeggs mike at bystander.net wrote:
> 2009/2/11 Martin Barry <marty at supine.com>
> 
>> $quoted_author = "Bernard Robertson-Dunn" ;
>>> 10-12% improvement in space utilisation with blades I can believe.
>> I'm actually surprised it's not more.
>>
>> Power density is usually an issue...
>>
> I'm not aware of any public co-lo facility in Australia that can support
> blade servers at full density. The power and cooling requirements can be
> over 10kW - more than what 5 space heaters would draw per rack.
> I imagine all these server salespeople doing ROI calculations "you can go
> from 40 racks to 10, saving 75% of your co-lo bill" then the co-lo operators
> tell them they can only support quarter full racks.

This is certainly the case in the US. That's why over here you're billed
on power, and rack space is "almost free". The other factor is existing
cooling plant equipment was speced on a much lower power density than
you can achieve with blades or even modern many-core servers.

Mikal



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