Blade Servers

[Andster29]

My brother and I have been looking into getting a blade system to share for experimentation purposes. I know a lot of people say they cost a lot of money, but we have found a few nice ones over at ebay for a good price/host. We mainly want a lot of host to experiment with distributed systems and high processing density, along with experience in using a blade system. I mainly want to know if there are special licenses that we will have to buy or anything that may make it hard to get the system running. Essentially the struggles of setting up a blade system and anything we should be aware of. 

 

 

Side note: Can any system be set up to work as a SAN?

[KuJoe]

They are power hungry, expect your power bill to jump significantly if you have more than a few blades running not including the extra AC required to cool them. There are no licenses for the hardware themselves but some remote management might require a license (Dell's DRAC does not, HP's ILO does). Any system can utilize network storage but you may need to get a separate mezzanine card for the blades to utilize boot from SAN.

[Electronics Wizardy]

There normal servers, so no special licenses.

 

Id stay away unless you need 10+ servers

-They run VERY LOUD(will hurt your hearing if your in the same room for extended time)

-They use lots of power(many won't use standard plugs)

-They are very heavy(You normally need 2+ people to move one without a lift)

 

 

Your not using a blade for storage, so get a external san over fiberchannel or ethernet to use.

[Guest]

Pretty much what has been said above. Licensing for them is pretty much the same as any other though some brands require specific remote/out of band management licensing.

 

As for power - that's a big pain as a lot of them use 3 phase power connectors of some varience due to their requirements.

[Andster29]

So really just do my research before purchasing and try and go for the systems that have free management software. 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Andster29 said:

So really just do my research before purchasing and try and go for the systems that have free management software. 

Well the remote management port isn't too much of an issue once you've got the OS environment on there.

[Andster29]

12 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

There normal servers, so no special licenses.

 

Id stay away unless you need 10+ servers

-They run VERY LOUD(will hurt your hearing if your in the same room for extended time)

-They use lots of power(many won't use standard plugs)

-They are very heavy(You normally need 2+ people to move one without a lift)

 

 

Your not using a blade for storage, so get a external san over fiberchannel or ethernet to use.

 We have a older Dell 2900 sitting around that is not being utilized, we would like to try and use that system as a SAN if possible.

[Andster29]

3 minutes ago, Windspeed36 said:

Well the remote management port isn't too much of an issue once you've got the OS environment on there.

That is true, you could just use TeamViewer or something like that once windows is running. Would you have to use the remote management software if you were just sitting at the host using the KVM that is built into the chassis?

[KuJoe]

I just did the math and right now I'm logged into an HP C7000 enclosure with only 6 blades populated out of 12, it's using 1437 watts of power over 220v. If I were to run this at home it would cost me $87.78 per month just in the electricity. The current cooling requirements for this are 4903 BTU/hour so I would basically need to buy a $129 window AC unit that costs $33.60 per month to operate 24x7 (estimated power usage of 550w at the highest setting). Are 6 blades worth $1500 per year in power and cooling costs? It's your call.

[KuJoe]

9 minutes ago, Andster29 said:

 We have a older Dell 2900 sitting around that is not being utilized, we would like to try and use that system as a SAN if possible.

Talk about another power hungry monster.  I've got piles of Dell 2950s not even worth a trip to the scrap yard.

[Andster29]

3 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

I just did the math and right now I'm logged into an HP C7000 enclosure with only 6 blades populated out of 12, it's using 1437 watts of power over 220v. If I were to run this at home it would cost me $87.78 per month just in the electricity. The current cooling requirements for this are 4903 BTU/hour so I would basically need to buy a $129 window AC unit that costs $33.60 per month to operate 24x7 (estimated power usage of 550w at the highest setting). Are 6 blades worth $1500 per year in power and cooling costs? It's your call.

We are also tossing around the idea of renting out space on it to help offset the cost. Still in the planning stages. 

 

2 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Not worth it, the 3Gbps SATA II interface is too slow.

But it is feasible to use the system as a SAN temporarily? 

[KuJoe]

14 minutes ago, Andster29 said:

We are also tossing around the idea of renting out space on it to help offset the cost. Still in the planning stages. 

 

But it is feasible to use the system as a SAN temporarily? 

Why not invest the money into an extremely beefy server and virtualize the server with something free like Proxmox (KVM) or VMware's ESXi, that way you can build out like 30 VMs with dedicated CPUs (depending on the hardware) and treat each one like it's own server. It will act identical to a physical server and even more-so like a blade server since the only benefit to physical servers is usually the PCI slots which all of the blades I've seen don't have. You can even add a second server for expansion if needed and the power cost and noise levels for both servers are a fraction of a single blade chassis with one blade in it.

 

I edited my post about the 2900 because I remember it only has 1Gbps ports on it so SATA II should max out the NICs just fine. Power usage is still pretty high compared to the performance it delivers, for me it would cost about $20.19 per month to run a Dell 2900 24x7 in my house whereas you can get a Synology NAS for less than $300 that supports SATA III, iSCSI, and bigger hard drives (Dell 2900 is limited to 2TB with the PERC6 last time I checked) and costs me less than $20/year to run 24x7.

[Andster29]

11 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Why not invest the money into an extremely beefy server and virtualize the server with something free like Proxmox (KVM) or VMware's ESXi, that way you can build out like 30 VMs with dedicated CPUs (depending on the hardware) and treat each one like it's own server. It will act identical to a physical server and even more-so like a blade server since the only benefit to physical servers is usually the PCI slots which all of the blades I've seen don't have. You can even add a second server for expansion if needed and the power cost and noise levels for both servers are a fraction of a single blade chassis with one blade in it.

 

I edited my post about the 2900 because I remember it only has 1Gbps ports on it so SATA II should max out the NICs just fine. Power usage is still pretty high compared to the performance it delivers, for me it would cost about $20.19 per month to run a Dell 2900 24x7 in my house whereas you can get a Synology NAS for less than $300 that supports SATA III, iSCSI, and bigger hard drives (Dell 2900 is limited to 2TB with the PERC6 last time I checked) and costs me less than $20/year to run 24x7.

Our plan was to use ESXI since we have previous experience with it. I have always wanted to play around with a blade system and have experience with it. We also have a couple of friends that want their own host but do not have the means to store it or what to deal with the hardware, I thought this would be a more consolidated solution. I also wanted personally more room for F@H to work with and using a Linux distro that does distributed computing and seeing how that scales across multiple host. It is really just a giant testing and experimentation platform for a group of high school students. We do not want to be limited by number of host or performance overhead. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

45 minutes ago, Andster29 said:

Our plan was to use ESXI since we have previous experience with it. I have always wanted to play around with a blade system and have experience with it. We also have a couple of friends that want their own host but do not have the means to store it or what to deal with the hardware, I thought this would be a more consolidated solution. I also wanted personally more room for F@H to work with and using a Linux distro that does distributed computing and seeing how that scales across multiple host. It is really just a giant testing and experimentation platform for a group of high school students. We do not want to be limited by number of host or performance overhead. 

Is there a reason you don't want a few r710's or simmilar. There normally cheaper, much quieter and better for your uses. The only reason to run blades is if you limited on space, and for a small home system you aren't host limited.

[SLAYR]

1 hour ago, Andster29 said:

So really just do my research before purchasing and try and go for the systems that have free management software. 

Do lots of research before you buy a blade system like @Windspeed36 said some take triple phase power if it does it will not work on a home power grid you are going to need a seperate transformer to step up to 208V, at like 15A-20A, about 3-4KW for the unit, and that still may end up blowing up your circuit breaker.

 

Try to find one with standard power connectors.

 

[Emmien]

3 hours ago, SLAYR said:

Do lots of research before you buy a blade system like @Windspeed36 said some take triple phase power if it does it will not work on a home power grid you are going to need a seperate transformer to step up to 208V, at like 15A-20A, about 3-4KW for the unit, and that still may end up blowing up your circuit breaker.

 

Try to find one with standard power connectors.

 

A transformer can't convert single phase to 3 phase power.

 

The only way to do it is to connect a single phase motor to a 3 phase generator. You get a very dirty supply though. It is ok for running motors (A common way to power workshops) and lighting, but not computers.