| Server Consolidation has been a major trend for | | | | Blade Servers are small factor servers housed in |
| the past few years. As the economic is going | | | | chassis. Each chassis house multiple thin, modular |
| down & the IT budge is shrinking while demand | | | | electronic circuit boards, known as blade server. |
| for services is increasing. IT Departments around | | | | Each blade is a server in its own right containing |
| the globe are challenged to deliver more with less. | | | | CPU, memory, NICs, HBAs, & other I/O cards. |
| Datacenter consolidation has not stopped at the | | | | Each blade server is often dedicated to a single |
| CIOs desk, but it has climbed up to CEOs offices. | | | | application. In most blades solutions available today |
| As usual different organization has used different | | | | the chassis as well includes the required |
| approaches & many have combined multiple | | | | networking & SAN Fabric infrastructure (Network |
| approaches. Below are the main approaches. | | | | Switches & SAN Switches). Blades servers help in |
| Application Consolidation is the oldest consolidation | | | | significantly reducing the requirements for space, |
| approach. IT departments have been using | | | | switches, cables, racks, power supplies and PDUs. |
| application consolidation for ages. Application | | | | This helps you save on power and cooling costs, |
| consolidation is where you run multiple applications | | | | simplify and speed up deployment and |
| or loads of an application on the same server. | | | | management, and lower IT staff costs. Blades |
| Although this has been there the longest, it’s | | | | have been a major trend in server consolidation |
| the worst method for server consolidation unless | | | | these days, but they still have one problem when |
| planned carefully. Most IT departments have | | | | used for consolidation. You will still have the same |
| discovered that running multiple applications on the | | | | amount of processing power you used to have |
| same server at once without isolation will lead to | | | | earlier when consolidating with blades. If you had |
| many complications & many applications are not | | | | 10 servers earlier, you will still end up with 10 |
| supported to run in parallel on the same server. | | | | blades. Although these 10 blades will use less |
| The only place applications consolidation has a | | | | power & way less space, they might have more |
| success is in database consolidation. The reason | | | | processing power than your old rack mounted |
| behind is that you can consolidate most of your | | | | servers. That means you will have a lot of |
| application databases assuming they support the | | | | wasted paid for processing power, which is the |
| same database type on the same server without | | | | reason why many IT Companies are combining |
| major issues. | | | | blades with Virtualization covered next. |