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anyone use dell blades ? mainly the new 610's
- Thread starter McBunny
- Start date
Greeny.
ClioSport Club Member
440i + 182
We have used Dell hardware through our company for 6+ years and never had an issue tbh, all doing its job really well.
really ? i found a hp document comparing the dell blade one of their own once you got past the propaganda the dell spec was higher
for 2.5k i didnt think that spec was bad really
Great thing with blades are that their easily scaleable, its all down to costs, like most things, Im an Oracle DBA and we are a Sun site, one of our machines has 8 dual core fast cpu's and 64gb memory connected to a couple of terrabyte san all clustered, we tried to downscale to some t2000's which are 1 cpu 16 cores, sounds great but dont scale well, many users=problems. Dell kit is good and to be fair Oracle are replacing ALL they're kit with dell, so it cant be that bad 
We used to use SAP at CSC and from memory its really resource intensive so you will need to spec it well.
We used to use SAP at CSC and from memory its really resource intensive so you will need to spec it well.
ChrisR
ClioSport Club Member
Not tried the dell ones although they did have an offer on last year for an enclosure and 2 blades for £3!
Got 2 HP enclosures at 2 sites, cost of some of the blades is rediculous though. Got 3 blades which each have 4 6 core Xeons in and silly amount of RAM, were about 20k each, ouch.
Got 2 HP enclosures at 2 sites, cost of some of the blades is rediculous though. Got 3 blades which each have 4 6 core Xeons in and silly amount of RAM, were about 20k each, ouch.
FLOL, really, and on what basis is that?
The IBM is WAY behind the HP in nearly every way.
Doesn't have as good a management, doesn't have as good a redundancy, doesn't have as many blade server options, doesn't have as many interconnect options.
The HP is easily the best blade chassis at the moment, and thats why they have around 70% share and have done for the past few years.
The Dell is ok, we have all three chassis's at work, got them all free and we chose HP blades to host all our servers, we have about 25 of them i think now.
We recently sold about 400 into edf energy, so all their systems are on hp blades.
WoW runs on HP blades, although that was the older series which is crap compared to tbe c-class.
This is one product that HP got exactly right and no-one has beaten them after 3-4 years of it being on the market. Dell tried, by poaching the guy who penned the Hp chassis, it looks similar but is not up to the same standard and doesn't have anywhere near the management capabilites as the HP.
You say you have to go Dell bunny, which is fair enough, but i've have a few people through the door who have been shown both and can see how far ahead the HP is.
What the Dell has going for it is cheapness.
they gave us a free one this week to try and butter us, was a twin processor X5570 with 128 gb ram i think and every option under the sun, must be worth a good 15k lol. We are going to just use it as a test server for our hyper-v
theres a document i would love to share with you mate but i'm under NDA so i'm going to have to do a Lee on you
The Dell is better than the IBM, i'll say that, the IBM technology is too old now.
The issue I have with the dell is that when you put the first blade in the top left slot in the enclosure it is only attached at the top by a rial and so is free to swing until you put more blades in, its just a bit naff imo.
Also, I believe they can't do 10g ethernet on the blades as the backplane can't take the bandwidth. The HP blades now have 2x 10gb ethernet ports as standard, and they are pretty special. When using their virtual connect module it sort of virtualises the NICS and you can split each port into 4 separate nics, and you can choose what bandwidth they have.
So you can choose to have 1 x 4g, 1 x 3g and 2 x 1.5g on the one port and whatever you want on the second. Means you don't have to add loads more nics for vmware as the two onboard give you 20gb of traffic and are split into 8. Amazing technology, works really well.
Also, the Dell chassis can only survive 1 fan failure, not multiple failures, i think like the ibm it has active components on the midplane too which is a single point of failure. HP only have 1 active component on the midplane (the only part which isn't redundant in any blade chassis) and its toreport the serial number, so is no great loss if you lose it etc.
I love blades, been an evangelist for them for about 4 years now, i've studied every bit of competitive info from all the manufacturers and like i said, we have an ibm and dell chassis too inhouse.
Anyway, if you are forced to go with DELL then you have no other option, its definitely the way forward though, its all we seem to be selling at the mo.
The Dell is better than the IBM, i'll say that, the IBM technology is too old now.
The issue I have with the dell is that when you put the first blade in the top left slot in the enclosure it is only attached at the top by a rial and so is free to swing until you put more blades in, its just a bit naff imo.
Also, I believe they can't do 10g ethernet on the blades as the backplane can't take the bandwidth. The HP blades now have 2x 10gb ethernet ports as standard, and they are pretty special. When using their virtual connect module it sort of virtualises the NICS and you can split each port into 4 separate nics, and you can choose what bandwidth they have.
So you can choose to have 1 x 4g, 1 x 3g and 2 x 1.5g on the one port and whatever you want on the second. Means you don't have to add loads more nics for vmware as the two onboard give you 20gb of traffic and are split into 8. Amazing technology, works really well.
Also, the Dell chassis can only survive 1 fan failure, not multiple failures, i think like the ibm it has active components on the midplane too which is a single point of failure. HP only have 1 active component on the midplane (the only part which isn't redundant in any blade chassis) and its toreport the serial number, so is no great loss if you lose it etc.
I love blades, been an evangelist for them for about 4 years now, i've studied every bit of competitive info from all the manufacturers and like i said, we have an ibm and dell chassis too inhouse.
Anyway, if you are forced to go with DELL then you have no other option, its definitely the way forward though, its all we seem to be selling at the mo.
this article always makes me laugh too, 2 years ago dell were very anti blades, now they love them
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/19/dell_hp_blade/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/19/dell_hp_blade/
Better than yours. C*nt.
I think that you're talking different 10Gb - the HP one is virtual. You can partition the nic on the virtual switch thing in the back of the c-class to give a 4GB or 10x1GB NICs. Very, very clever.
It's the one thing I really do rate about the new HP blades - it's just a shame they wanted to retain the enclosure which has a single DC rail...
It's the one thing I really do rate about the new HP blades - it's just a shame they wanted to retain the enclosure which has a single DC rail...
one question, have you heard of nonstop servers?
if you have then you will know that having nonstop blades going into the c-class chassis proves they have 100% faith in it not having a single point of failure.
if you want to talk about single points of failure then your ibm midplane has tens of active components, very very bad in this type of system.
another one to watch will be Cisco servers, their blade stuff is going to be pretty highend.
LOL, OK, so there 'was' an issue (and i knew fully about this issue but i knew of no-one who was directly affected by it as HP replaced any power supplies in the batch within a day or 2 so very proactive) but this is not an issue now, and was such a small chance of anything happening before it wasn't worth worrying about but they dealt with it anyway.
HP run nonstop servers on blades, now as you didn't reply to that question i guess you don't know about them, well they are the server that air traffic control are run on, i.e. their design spec being that they do not stop as theya re critical systems.
If HP had a single point of failure, they wouldn't sell blades for this purpose using the same chassis would they?
The IBM only has 2 power supplies and 2 blowers, now that is nowhere near as resilient as the Dell and HP who use 6 power supplies (can lsoe about 4 of them before there is any need to panic!) and 10 (Dell is 9) fans.
LOL @ McBunny, I love my discussions with Mike, especially when he thinks he knows it all because he's an IT Manager or something along those lines. It doesn't matter that I am a senior technical consultant and integrator with many years experience on all blade platforms to him, hes still right and loves reading just the FUD that gets noted in the press. I'm sure hes much better than me at a lot of things, when it comes to blades, SAN and Vmware though, I kind of rock as its my job to!
Better than yours. C*nt.
I think you take yourself too seriously.
I do know what Nonstop servers are, and I'm well aware of what they are. I'm actually technical myself, so chill the f**k out and accept that there are two sides to everything. And that HP aren't the be-all and end all of everything. There's some proper awesome s**t out there, and HP are just a halfway house...
I do know what Nonstop servers are, and I'm well aware of what they are. I'm actually technical myself, so chill the f**k out and accept that there are two sides to everything. And that HP aren't the be-all and end all of everything. There's some proper awesome s**t out there, and HP are just a halfway house...
but in the world of blades, HP are well ahead of the rest.
I admit, in storage, HP are not no.1, EMC are and netapp are about on par but as far as servers go, HP have the market lead, in both rack mount and Blade, simple.
And why do you have to blow your top, its a discussion, you can't always win, you don't have to throw your toys out of the pram to end the discussion.
Oh and I might take myself seriously as i'm not a fan of people giving out false information, I see too much of it in my job and people spend lots of money on peoples recommendation and it pisses me off when the advice is bullshit. I'm a passionate person.
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oh and just to make it clear Mike, when I said you were an IT Manager that wasn't meant in a derogatory way, i know there are two kinds of It manager, some know it and some know feck all about it and only how to manage.
I know you are a technical person, that goes without question.
I guess i have an advantage in that we are a partner to all the vendors so I get all the insider info form all of them slagging each other off to i can form my opinion from all the fud and not just the bits that get put on the internet. I also have all 3 chassis's infront of me to pull apart and test so that also helps.
I know you are a technical person, that goes without question.
I guess i have an advantage in that we are a partner to all the vendors so I get all the insider info form all of them slagging each other off to i can form my opinion from all the fud and not just the bits that get put on the internet. I also have all 3 chassis's infront of me to pull apart and test so that also helps.
Better than yours. C*nt.
I'm moving that way myself now - all I get is second hand information from someone I'm buddies with at a reseller for everything, and the case studies and work they've done. Apparently the HP thing is something they got quite heavily thrashed for. They've also said the IBM blades have their own weaknesses but on the whole can sustain 'more' failures because of the different thought process gone into the backplane - although it was highlighted that they run less power supplies, theory being one goes pop and you replace it anyway. IMHO if you let a blade enclosure have 2, 3 or 4 failed power supplies you deserve it going down!!!
Aaaaaaaaanyway - just take a step back dude. I'm not as bad as this impression you have of me - I've put a load of work into the solutions I recommend (including 3 HP bladecenters, so I know their worth) and I think it unfair to dismiss that. I'm the only bugger in the team at the moment who will turn round and say 'no, if they want our business they'll send us an example to compare. If they don't, they know the competition is better'. Everyone else is a google-buyer.
Better than yours. C*nt.
Dell aren't too bad, but Apple are criminal for it. All IMHO, but then I wouldn't buy manufacturer-ram on anything other than Generation 5/6 (PE2950II upwards) kit. Everything else gets Kingston/Crucial/Corsair/Hypertek as they're all more than adequate.
