The technology Blade is one of the most interesting topics in the world of servers. The Blades are frequently commented on by the press, blogs and IT companies, but not always easy to distinguish when it makes sense or not to have Blades servers in a data center. There are two important messages behind the technology Blade: 1. Blades are not for everyone and 2. Blades offer great benefits if they are implemented in the correct position.
In this article I will address the first item ... The Blades are not for everyone
The Blades have great benefits, But not perfect, nor designed for all the burdens of work and situations. A server Blade is an extremely compact server designed to provide a high level of performance and simplicity with an efficient power consumption. With these benefits, they also certain limitations:
Limited expandability (less and less PCI slots & equivalent hard drives) Tie the purchase of components from one supplier (only can buy servers, KVMs, ethernet switches, fiber switches and other components that come into the chassis from their Bladescenter vendor. The expansion in the Blades tend to tie you up because the expansion slots can only be populated by "daughtercards" with proprietary specifications. This implies that the network cards, fiber-channel controllers SAS / RAID / SCSI cards and remote access will have to be purchased from the manufacturer of the Blade.
Although the power consumption of a Blade is smaller than that of a normal server, its small size allows more servers in a rack proving a timely increase in electricity consumption in the rack - which means that to make the most out their compact infrastructure Blades will have to invest considerably in cooling and electrical infrastructure. In addition to get the maximum benefit to lower power consumption, the chassis of the Blade must be populated in its entirety.
The limited capacity on disk in the Blades leads it to require facilities SAN type (which brings significant benefits - but they are expensive). Additionally, some manufacturers recommend setting a "Boot from SAN "on all servers within the chassis to avoid having disks in each Blade - although this may sound interesting is relatively expensive. These items are not necessarily negative, but involve costs and investments that have to be looked at the time that evaluates technology Blade. Though blades still have a great benefits offered by the Blades when they are implemented in the correct position. Many other articles on the web are discussing the benefits of blades, here we just thought to make sure the limitation is pointed out. In fact, these limitations are quite difference from a vendor to another, to find the best fitting vendor with less limitation check out:
IBM Bladecenter vs HP Bladecenter
Dell Bladecenter vs SUN Bladecenter
Friday, January 16, 2009
Protect your Servers - Security Guidance Centre for Small Business
If you think of your servers as your network's command centre, it's easy to understand why it is mission-critical to keep them safe from attack. Once your servers are compromised, your entire network is at risk. While some server attacks are merely annoying, others can cause serious damage. To protect your business, protect your servers.
If you're a small business, you may not have more than a server or two. But no matter how few or how many servers you are running, your network relies on them. They serve the applications or web pages or e-mail your team needs to do their jobs. They store valuable and/or confidential information resources. They provide a means for your customers to communicate with you, perhaps even purchase goods or services from you.
So if your servers are down, you lose productivity, you jeopardise customer relationships and you may even take an economic hit.
Basic Steps You Can Take
Many of the procedures already discussed will help protect your servers too. So if you haven't yet taken care of the following, make these steps a priority:
Step 1: Protect Your Desktops and Laptops Step 2: Keep Your Data Safe Step 3: Use the Internet Safely Step 4: Protect Your Network
Even with those security measures addressed, there is more you can do to protect your servers.
1. Keep your servers in a safe place. Businesses must make sure that their servers are not vulnerable to physical calamities. Locate these machines in a secure, well-ventilated room, not in a hallway or under a desk where someone might inadvertently kick or spill coffee on them. Or mischievously tinker with them. Your server room should have no windows and a single door you can lock. Server cases should also be locked to prevent tampering with internal components. Know which employees have keys to the server room. You should also keep a record of the serial numbers of your servers, and mark them with your company information, so they can be identified and recovered if stolen.
2. Practice least privilege. With Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003 and Small Business Server 2003, it is possible to assign users different permission levels. Rather than giving all users "Administrator" access - which is not a best practice for maintaining a secure environment for PCs or servers - you should use your servers to manage client PCs. Windows Servers can be configured to give individual users access to specific programs only, and to define which user privileges are allowed on the server. This ensures users can't make changes in areas that are critical to the server or client PC operation. It also prevents them from installing software that may introduce a virus or otherwise compromise the integrity of your network.
3. Understand your security options. Today's servers are more secure than ever, but the powerful security settings you find in Windows server products are only good if they are used appropriately and monitored aggressively. If your team doesn't have an IT specialist and/or expertise in security issues, consider hiring an outside consultant to work with you to appropriately protect your servers.
If you're a small business, you may not have more than a server or two. But no matter how few or how many servers you are running, your network relies on them. They serve the applications or web pages or e-mail your team needs to do their jobs. They store valuable and/or confidential information resources. They provide a means for your customers to communicate with you, perhaps even purchase goods or services from you.
So if your servers are down, you lose productivity, you jeopardise customer relationships and you may even take an economic hit.
Basic Steps You Can Take
Many of the procedures already discussed will help protect your servers too. So if you haven't yet taken care of the following, make these steps a priority:
Step 1: Protect Your Desktops and Laptops Step 2: Keep Your Data Safe Step 3: Use the Internet Safely Step 4: Protect Your Network
Even with those security measures addressed, there is more you can do to protect your servers.
1. Keep your servers in a safe place. Businesses must make sure that their servers are not vulnerable to physical calamities. Locate these machines in a secure, well-ventilated room, not in a hallway or under a desk where someone might inadvertently kick or spill coffee on them. Or mischievously tinker with them. Your server room should have no windows and a single door you can lock. Server cases should also be locked to prevent tampering with internal components. Know which employees have keys to the server room. You should also keep a record of the serial numbers of your servers, and mark them with your company information, so they can be identified and recovered if stolen.
2. Practice least privilege. With Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003 and Small Business Server 2003, it is possible to assign users different permission levels. Rather than giving all users "Administrator" access - which is not a best practice for maintaining a secure environment for PCs or servers - you should use your servers to manage client PCs. Windows Servers can be configured to give individual users access to specific programs only, and to define which user privileges are allowed on the server. This ensures users can't make changes in areas that are critical to the server or client PC operation. It also prevents them from installing software that may introduce a virus or otherwise compromise the integrity of your network.
3. Understand your security options. Today's servers are more secure than ever, but the powerful security settings you find in Windows server products are only good if they are used appropriately and monitored aggressively. If your team doesn't have an IT specialist and/or expertise in security issues, consider hiring an outside consultant to work with you to appropriately protect your servers.
What are the Blade Servers?
The servers "Blade" are nothing new in the world of computing. Entire computers were placed in the cards since 1970 as part of an effort to reduce the footprint (the amount of space required) for IT solutions.Today, companies employ servers "Blade" for the same reasons that were designed in the 70s: to save space cluttered within data centers.
The solution lies in a compound that houses typically between 8 and 16 servers, called "Blade servers". The Bladecenter chassis is placed on a rack in the data center and provides the infrastructure for the "Blade" servers, such as space on the rack, energy, switching and network connectivity (no cable is required for each server). Most of the bladecenter chassis range from 6 to 10U in size, which means that, theoretically, you can place 64 or more servers on a rack. This is a great savings for a company with space problems.
What is the disadvantage? With most types of solutions being "too good to be true" there are always disadvantages and "Blade" servers is no exception. Greater numbers of servers also means more energy and more heat in a confined space. If you are considering installing a "Blade" server be sure to take into account the implications related to energy and heat. A new Liebert unit can provide enough space. Some datacenter can hold up to twice its normal space on the rack, so it is important to take into account the additional power and cooling requirements for the units.
According to Gartner, Blade servers are the segment with the fastest growth in the servers market, though this growth will be limited. The shipments will grow from 850,000 in 2006 to 2.3 million in 2011, representing almost 22% of the shipments of servers. Blade Servers will not disappear, so be sure to consider them in future design of your datacenter.
When you consider blades for your datacenter, its very important to choose the right blade solution for your environment. To find out how the best blades vendor offering compare check out:
The solution lies in a compound that houses typically between 8 and 16 servers, called "Blade servers". The Bladecenter chassis is placed on a rack in the data center and provides the infrastructure for the "Blade" servers, such as space on the rack, energy, switching and network connectivity (no cable is required for each server). Most of the bladecenter chassis range from 6 to 10U in size, which means that, theoretically, you can place 64 or more servers on a rack. This is a great savings for a company with space problems.
What is the disadvantage? With most types of solutions being "too good to be true" there are always disadvantages and "Blade" servers is no exception. Greater numbers of servers also means more energy and more heat in a confined space. If you are considering installing a "Blade" server be sure to take into account the implications related to energy and heat. A new Liebert unit can provide enough space. Some datacenter can hold up to twice its normal space on the rack, so it is important to take into account the additional power and cooling requirements for the units.
According to Gartner, Blade servers are the segment with the fastest growth in the servers market, though this growth will be limited. The shipments will grow from 850,000 in 2006 to 2.3 million in 2011, representing almost 22% of the shipments of servers. Blade Servers will not disappear, so be sure to consider them in future design of your datacenter.
When you consider blades for your datacenter, its very important to choose the right blade solution for your environment. To find out how the best blades vendor offering compare check out:
Learn Blade Servers:
What are the Blade servers?
Thin servers, exchange hot, fit in a single chassis like books on a shelf - and each is a separate server, with its own processors, memory, storage, network controllers, operating system and applications. Blade server simply slides back inside a compartment on the chassis and fits into a half-plate connections or later, sharing power, fans, floppy drives, switches, and gateways to other Blade servers. The advantages of the boarding Blade will be evident to anyone with the task of moving hundreds of pots and cables through racks just to add and remove servers. With switches and power units shared, precious space is being waged - and Blade servers enable higher density with far greater ease.
Affordable Density
With a large number of blades of high-performance server in a single chassis, Blade technology reaches high levels of density. Further expansion is possible via optional modules: the performance and density are balanced, leveraging the infrastructure for optimal utilization. And all this performance and density are extremely cost effective. The increased density means fewer racks. Fewer components are duplicated.The number of cables is reduced dramatically, in some cases, the switches and power distribution units are also in smaller amounts. Fewer components contributing to a total of lesser items that may have bugs or need repairs, and modular scalability helps distribute the costs of capital equipment over time. Many of the expenses of daily life - energy needs and cooling, hours of assembly and installation, square footage of physical space - are designed so that it can be reduced with the architecture Blade.
Easy maintenance All critical components of a Blade server can be transformed into redundant, hot exchange, including: cooling systems, power supply, controllers and Ethernet switches, hard disk drives and processors. Remove a server for maintenance is as simple as sliding the Blade outward from the chassis, which is as simple as removing a hotswap HDD from a server. The advanced Blade servers offer intelligent ways of obtaining maintenance of high sensitivity. Some of the components of the Blade servers can alert a systems management processor hours or even days before failure occurs. Advanced diagnostics run directly on the server allowing a quick and efficient restoration. Some Blade servers can even be designed so you do not have a single point of failure.
Modular Scalability
Blade servers are revolutionaries because it climb upwards but not outward.Adding a new blade only mean that you have to slide a blade in the chassis or a module in the modules slot into the chassis. The modular design technology of Blade makes scalability has the speed of lightning.
Availability flexible Blade technology is designed to eliminate the limitations imposed by the old conventional design for servers, in which each server could accommodate only one type of processor. Each Blade in a chassis is actually a self-contained server, running its own operating system and software. The Blade Chassis can carry a mix of blades, with different speeds and types of processors. And this technology are developing rapidly offer real protection to investments for the future.
Ramifications techniques Benefits are immediate, tangible, making technology Server Blade an important contribution to a revolution in progress aimed at computing on demand. Taken together with other rapidly emerging technologies (grid computing, autonomic computing, Web services, distributed computing, etc.).,
Who Offer the Best Blades?
There are no perfect blades offering in the market today, its all about your needs & which blade offering fit your needs. Though reading how these blades offering compare can help you identify the blade offering which fit your needs the most. Check out the following comparisons to find out the Blade for you:
HP Blade Server vs Dell Blade Server
IBM Blade Server vs SUN Blade Server
Thin servers, exchange hot, fit in a single chassis like books on a shelf - and each is a separate server, with its own processors, memory, storage, network controllers, operating system and applications. Blade server simply slides back inside a compartment on the chassis and fits into a half-plate connections or later, sharing power, fans, floppy drives, switches, and gateways to other Blade servers. The advantages of the boarding Blade will be evident to anyone with the task of moving hundreds of pots and cables through racks just to add and remove servers. With switches and power units shared, precious space is being waged - and Blade servers enable higher density with far greater ease.
Affordable Density
With a large number of blades of high-performance server in a single chassis, Blade technology reaches high levels of density. Further expansion is possible via optional modules: the performance and density are balanced, leveraging the infrastructure for optimal utilization. And all this performance and density are extremely cost effective. The increased density means fewer racks. Fewer components are duplicated.The number of cables is reduced dramatically, in some cases, the switches and power distribution units are also in smaller amounts. Fewer components contributing to a total of lesser items that may have bugs or need repairs, and modular scalability helps distribute the costs of capital equipment over time. Many of the expenses of daily life - energy needs and cooling, hours of assembly and installation, square footage of physical space - are designed so that it can be reduced with the architecture Blade.
Easy maintenance All critical components of a Blade server can be transformed into redundant, hot exchange, including: cooling systems, power supply, controllers and Ethernet switches, hard disk drives and processors. Remove a server for maintenance is as simple as sliding the Blade outward from the chassis, which is as simple as removing a hotswap HDD from a server. The advanced Blade servers offer intelligent ways of obtaining maintenance of high sensitivity. Some of the components of the Blade servers can alert a systems management processor hours or even days before failure occurs. Advanced diagnostics run directly on the server allowing a quick and efficient restoration. Some Blade servers can even be designed so you do not have a single point of failure.
Modular Scalability
Blade servers are revolutionaries because it climb upwards but not outward.Adding a new blade only mean that you have to slide a blade in the chassis or a module in the modules slot into the chassis. The modular design technology of Blade makes scalability has the speed of lightning.
Availability flexible Blade technology is designed to eliminate the limitations imposed by the old conventional design for servers, in which each server could accommodate only one type of processor. Each Blade in a chassis is actually a self-contained server, running its own operating system and software. The Blade Chassis can carry a mix of blades, with different speeds and types of processors. And this technology are developing rapidly offer real protection to investments for the future.
Ramifications techniques Benefits are immediate, tangible, making technology Server Blade an important contribution to a revolution in progress aimed at computing on demand. Taken together with other rapidly emerging technologies (grid computing, autonomic computing, Web services, distributed computing, etc.).,
Who Offer the Best Blades?
There are no perfect blades offering in the market today, its all about your needs & which blade offering fit your needs. Though reading how these blades offering compare can help you identify the blade offering which fit your needs the most. Check out the following comparisons to find out the Blade for you:
HP Blade Server vs Dell Blade Server
IBM Blade Server vs SUN Blade Server
Microsoft Exchange - The Greatest Email on Earth
Microsoft Exchange is one of Microsoft’s combination servers which envelopes all services one would need into one convenient package: e-mail, scheduling, messaging and data storage. Rebranded Microsoft Outlook in 1997, Microsoft Exchange now uses a variety of clients and enables users to keep up with their email in a variety of device settings.
Microsoft exchange is now used on devices such as cell phones and PDA Smart phones; giving the user computers feel away from home. The service is also available to other computer systems such as Apple Macintosh, therefore not leaving any stone unturned when it comes to versatility of the program.
Now, Microsoft Exchange enables users to have access to anti-virus and anti-spyware programming in a multitude of settings. Users are also protected by an anti-spam program, which protects them from inbox flooding attacks as well as email takeovers by spammers.
Overall, when using Microsoft Exchange, one is using one of the most well programmed and beneficial email and scheduling programs available today. With all of the protection services, the user may check email and schedule meetings with confidence and without problematic spyware and spam issues plagued by other email clients. Also giving the user the option of an Intelligent Message Filter, which is an add-on that allows the user to block incoming messages or direct them to the “Junk E-Mail” folder in their Microsoft Outlook program.
Microsoft exchange is now used on devices such as cell phones and PDA Smart phones; giving the user computers feel away from home. The service is also available to other computer systems such as Apple Macintosh, therefore not leaving any stone unturned when it comes to versatility of the program.
Now, Microsoft Exchange enables users to have access to anti-virus and anti-spyware programming in a multitude of settings. Users are also protected by an anti-spam program, which protects them from inbox flooding attacks as well as email takeovers by spammers.
Overall, when using Microsoft Exchange, one is using one of the most well programmed and beneficial email and scheduling programs available today. With all of the protection services, the user may check email and schedule meetings with confidence and without problematic spyware and spam issues plagued by other email clients. Also giving the user the option of an Intelligent Message Filter, which is an add-on that allows the user to block incoming messages or direct them to the “Junk E-Mail” folder in their Microsoft Outlook program.
IT Outsourcing - Why IT managed services is the best option
Having a small or medium business and choosing to host your own IT (information technologies) could be a very naive decision. This model could seem like a very viable solution, as your business would have control over the servers, its behavior, the implementation methodologies… in few words, you’d have total control over your IT. But with great control, comes great responsibility.
Managing all the hosting could give you the idea that you’ll have “peace of mind”, but this could not become true. Having full control would mean you’d need to take care about disaster recovery, buying the required software licenses, buying the necessary hardware to host the software, have enough room for placing your hardware, hiring and training the personnel to manage your business’ IT, implementing network security, perform software and hardware maintenance, and the list goes on.
Implementing an IT solution by yourself (your business) doesn’t sound like the best idea now, does it? But what are your alternatives, then? The best option would be IT outsourcing (a.k.a. IT managed services). The best way to get rid of all the trouble is to transfer it to someone else. This solution, apart from eliminating most of the hassle, it could provide several benefits that you wouldn’t get if gone “on-premise”.
There are many IT outsourcing companies that are authorized resellers from important software or hardware companies, which would mean lower costs on your IT implementation. For example, Streamline Solutions a mainly Microsoft Dynamics CRM provider, is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Dell Authorized Reseller. For Streamline to implement CRM hosting and managed services to a customer would require a smaller budget to get all the necessary hardware and software than a company without any affiliation to any providers.
Another important benefit you usually get from outsourcing your IT solution is fixed costs. The contracts for the IT managed services are frequently based on monthly or yearly fees, so you’ll be certain about the budget you’ll need to start your IT hosting and managing. Otherwise, managing your own IT software and hardware would require a variable budget.
As a conclusion, if your business is not big enough to be able to spend the enormous budget IT hosting and management would require, IT outsourcing is the best option you can take.
Managing all the hosting could give you the idea that you’ll have “peace of mind”, but this could not become true. Having full control would mean you’d need to take care about disaster recovery, buying the required software licenses, buying the necessary hardware to host the software, have enough room for placing your hardware, hiring and training the personnel to manage your business’ IT, implementing network security, perform software and hardware maintenance, and the list goes on.
Implementing an IT solution by yourself (your business) doesn’t sound like the best idea now, does it? But what are your alternatives, then? The best option would be IT outsourcing (a.k.a. IT managed services). The best way to get rid of all the trouble is to transfer it to someone else. This solution, apart from eliminating most of the hassle, it could provide several benefits that you wouldn’t get if gone “on-premise”.
There are many IT outsourcing companies that are authorized resellers from important software or hardware companies, which would mean lower costs on your IT implementation. For example, Streamline Solutions a mainly Microsoft Dynamics CRM provider, is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Dell Authorized Reseller. For Streamline to implement CRM hosting and managed services to a customer would require a smaller budget to get all the necessary hardware and software than a company without any affiliation to any providers.
Another important benefit you usually get from outsourcing your IT solution is fixed costs. The contracts for the IT managed services are frequently based on monthly or yearly fees, so you’ll be certain about the budget you’ll need to start your IT hosting and managing. Otherwise, managing your own IT software and hardware would require a variable budget.
As a conclusion, if your business is not big enough to be able to spend the enormous budget IT hosting and management would require, IT outsourcing is the best option you can take.
Blade servers and virtualization: How can they now go together?
Did you know that blade servers and virtualization can be combined now to move forward in efforts to consolidate and reduce the number of servers needed in the data center?
Customers use virtualization to help resolve a variety of challenges. Many begin as part of a server consolidation strategy to reduce the purchase of hardware and reduce management, But the benefits of virtualization go well beyond the reduction of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). The Virtualization can also help reduce the development cycle and deployment of new applications. Furthermore, it can be used to increase the uptime of the systems and add more flexibility with all the advance features offered by virtualization vendors, which never deemed possible in a physical environment.
However, historically blades systems were not good candidates’ for your virtual infrastructure implementation, mainly due to the limited Scalability of these systems. For example the limited slots of network cards & memory slots in older blades were a real show stopper for using blades as the hardware platform for your virtualization environment.
Today, the server virtualization technology on Blade Servers can be an ideal solution for many customers with challenges such as; limitations of space, power, & cooling in the Data Center.
Blades systems today is the solution, from the energy point of view, the most efficient, and some hardware vendors already have dared that blades spend up to 19% less energy than the traditional model of 1U & 2U servers. Further more, Blades can highly improve the wiring of the Data Center.
Customers use virtualization to help resolve a variety of challenges. Many begin as part of a server consolidation strategy to reduce the purchase of hardware and reduce management, But the benefits of virtualization go well beyond the reduction of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). The Virtualization can also help reduce the development cycle and deployment of new applications. Furthermore, it can be used to increase the uptime of the systems and add more flexibility with all the advance features offered by virtualization vendors, which never deemed possible in a physical environment.
However, historically blades systems were not good candidates’ for your virtual infrastructure implementation, mainly due to the limited Scalability of these systems. For example the limited slots of network cards & memory slots in older blades were a real show stopper for using blades as the hardware platform for your virtualization environment.
Today, the server virtualization technology on Blade Servers can be an ideal solution for many customers with challenges such as; limitations of space, power, & cooling in the Data Center.
Blades systems today is the solution, from the energy point of view, the most efficient, and some hardware vendors already have dared that blades spend up to 19% less energy than the traditional model of 1U & 2U servers. Further more, Blades can highly improve the wiring of the Data Center.
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