VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘blades’

Cisco’s announcement of their Unified Computing System (UCS) has definitely been the biggest news this week. Self proclaimed to “unleash the power of virtualization”, the Cisco UCS is an “innovative architecture [that] integrates compute, networking, and virtualization in a single platform.” Although the Cisco UCS looks, feels, and behaves mostly like a chassis full of blade servers on the surface, it is apparently a revolutionary system tailored for virtual infrastructure and cloud services.

I’m late to blog on this topic this week so I’ll provide some quick links and quotes to some of the posts that I found especially helpful and informative from a virtualization perspective. Be sure to follow all the links and read these posts in full.

Click the image to the right for a larger view of the UCS diagram. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who runs their Virtual Infrastructure on an IBM BladeCenter has wondered if there is a key stroke combination to switch the keyboard, video and mouse (KVM) focus between Blades. For that matter, if you run any applications or services on IBM Blades you’ve either walked into the data center and pushed the buttons directly on the Blades or you’ve struggled with the remote Java web interface via the Management Module (MM or AMM) when you need direct KVM access to your servers. For those that don’t already know, there is a keyboard shortcut.

Credit goes to Aaron Delp’s post IBM BladeCenter Keyboard Lock Up for informing me on the key strokes, and now I am making sure I have a post to reference here at VM /ETC too. I have searched for this information for years, and for some reason have never found an answer.

Aaron’s post links to an IBM article about a resolution for the BladeCenter keyboard locking up – which really explains the keyboard shortcut process. The rest of this post is a cut and paste from the IBM article. Read the rest of this entry »

I received notice today about a project implementing ESX on IBM Blades and using System i for shared storage. After first doing a double take to make sure I read the email right, I did some quick research and found the following from the VMTN Communities:

VMware Communities: ESX on the IBM System i

“So how does VMware fit in with the System i? Well in a nut shell – The System i (which a lot of big companies have) can act as an iSCSI SAN, and you can boot IBM BladeServers and IBM System x Servers from this SAN, and have your shared storage too! Why is that so great? Because the IBM System i is one of the most reliable pieces of hardware on the planet! Because your company probably already has one! Because you can have a great backup and recovery platform!”

In case you are wondering what IBM System i is exactly, Read the rest of this entry »

Aaron Delp’s BladeVault.info site reports about calculators from HP and IBM that can help you plan for power when considering physical server consolidation by implementing blades. IBM’s calculator is a downloadable .msi while HP’s is an online calculator. HP also offers a downloadable offline version which has limited functionality compared to the online tool. IBM’s calculator is not just limited to blades as it computes power figures for all x series servers.

Read the rest of this entry »

IBM is running a VMware ESX evaluation promotion through December 31, 2008. Details about the promotion can be found at IBM System x and BladeCenter with VMware.

From the IBM site:

For a limited time, you can try VMware® Infrastructure 3 software when you purchase a VMware ServerProven® System x server or BladeCenter chassis. The eligible products are shipped with a flyer that entitles you to register for a 90-day evaluation license for VMware Infrastructure 3. Once registered, you will receive an email with your VMware Infrastructure license activation code and easy instructions on how to get started.

The promotional 90 day evaluation is an extension to the normal 60 day evaluation offered from the VMware.com downloads site.

Although closely working with your favorite VMware partner can also get you extended evaluation periods for ESX anyways, this promotion is worth mentioning for companies that are considering implementing Blades in their data center. A Blade Center is an effective option for reducing your server sprawl without virtualization, and with the ability now to have up to 6 nics and 32 mb of ram in some blade servers makes implementing VI3 on blades a great decision.

Packages including server hardware, Virtual Iron 4.0 and implementation services are now being offered from IBM and HP. Virtual Iron has also signed a reseller agreement with Dell. The combination of these new partnerships is positioning the VMware alternative as a highly visible choice for SMBs looking to migrate to a virtual datacenter.

An article from SearchServerVirtualization.com, Virtual Iron, IBM, HP package virtualization on blades for SMBs, reports on Virtual Iron’s new SMB strategy: Read the rest of this entry »

Normally you must enable hyper threading in your server’s BIOS before ESX will report it as enabled on the Configuration tab in the Processors section.

For some reason IBM’s HS21 blade with Intel 5160 Xeon processors incorrectly reports hyper-threading by ESX as supported but not enabled. I thought I was losing it when I could not find where to enable hyper-threading in the blade’s BIOS. Turns out the only Intel processor that uses hyper-threading is the Pentium 4 workstation processor.

In fact, the entire family of Intel 5100 server processors do not have hyper-threading. For that matter, Intel does not make a server processor with hyper-threading.

Intel server and workstation processors

VMware Communities: IBM HS21 Blade Servers …