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