A Small Business Guide to Blade Servers

December 03, 2010

Will your Next Server be a Blade Server?

Advances in technology in recent years means that mobile devices have reduced in size and the same has happened with monitors, laptops and lots of other gadgets in addition to small business servers.

Introducing the blade server -- essentially the blade server is a variation on the rack server but much smaller.

The advantage is that you can get more power into a much smaller space. And that's why companies with hefty small business server needs are beginning to look into blade servers as part of their small business IT strategy.

Server blades are hot in the server marketplace. While overall server revenues have struggled for the last couple of years and have only just recently started showing signs of recovery, blade sales have gone up. From next to nothing a few years back, they now represent 14 percent of server sales..

The best way to understand how blade servers work is to consider them as a data center infrastructure in a box. The box is known as an enclosure or chassis. The fans, power supplies and connections are all inside the chassis. Instead of running 20 servers individually, you can use 20 blades in an enclosure and run them as though they were one unit, this provides a 20:1 consolidation ratio.

In addition, there are three parts to a blade system: the blade server; the chassis, which contains the blade servers and provides the power and cooling; and communications devices and connections [also housed within the chassis] such as switches to connect [the blades] to the network and to storage devices.

Small businesses are able to use blade systems for simple tasks like sharing files and printers, and deploying applications. A blade server is perfect for those SMBs that are growing at a rapid pace or that want to be prepared for future growth and advances in technology.

Companies can start small with one enclosure and a few blades. As your business requires more computing power, you can add more server blades into available slots in less time than traditional rack servers.

Potential small business IT buyers are also warned to pay close attention to power and cooling demands. Blades pack a huge volume of processing capacity into a small space. The downsides are heat generation and a higher power usage. There is no point in looking into blades if your business premises can't accommodate them.

Read more information about blade servers

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