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For one...

http://www.rlx.com/

In addition to pioneering the whole concept of Server Blades, we've had a Linux-based management system for quite sometime. We're on our sixth generation, so it's pretty smooth to boot. Target audience varies a little bit, but the "first" they are not.

Just my $0.02.

-buf

PS. I work for RLX, though these opinions are mine.

Anybody have any idea what the basic "sweet spot" is to hardware/softwatre/bandwidth needs in order to laugh back at the /. effect -- and say keep bringin it boys.

I run our company's website that has been linked to on slashdot a handful of times, and survived without any problems. The key was bandwidth--not hardware.

The web site is hosted on three Transmeta 633Mhz Server Blades with 512MB RAM, and a 30GB laptop drive. These are connected through a firewall doing a custom load balancing scheme using iptables. Uplink from the firewall is to Level(3)'s network.

We pay for an average usage of 3Mbps but can burst to 100Mbps. The increase in bandwidth was short-lived enough that it only raised our bill slightly (less than $800--well worth the coverage!!).

So...in short, bandwidth is what matters. The hardware is nothing spectacular resource-wise.

Anybody have any idea what the basic "sweet spot" is to hardware/softwatre/bandwidth needs in order to laugh back at the /. effect -- and say keep bringin it boys.

I run our company's website that has been linked to on slashdot a handful of times, and survived without any problems. The key was bandwidth--not hardware.

The web site is hosted on three Transmeta 633Mhz Server Blades with 512MB RAM, and a 30GB laptop drive. These are connected through a firewall doing a custom load balancing scheme using iptables. Uplink from the firewall is to Level(3)'s network.

We pay for an average usage of 3Mbps but can burst to 100Mbps. The increase in bandwidth was short-lived enough that it only raised our bill slightly (less than $800--well worth the coverage!!).

So...in short, bandwidth is what matters. The hardware is nothing spectacular resource-wise.

http://www.rlx.com/product/

24 servers in a 3U chassis, or 6 in a 1U chassis.

-buf

ObDisclaimer: I'm an IT geek for RLX

Yes, they have had luck in embedded systems.

Checkout this company site.

They use transmeta chips in thier blade servers (multiple physical computers in one enclosure, for super high density computing).

Heres a direct link to the model 1000t, pretty neat design, and a company worth watching.

Yes, they have had luck in embedded systems.

Checkout this company site.

They use transmeta chips in thier blade servers (multiple physical computers in one enclosure, for super high density computing).

Heres a direct link to the model 1000t, pretty neat design, and a company worth watching.

Head over to RLX for a rack of 70 dual Xeon 3.0 GHz server blades all set up with the necessary clustering software and completely managed from a single web browser.

jpc

Here are some nerdy technical details to (hopefully) satisfy the rest of us :-)

RLX (formerly known as Rocket Logic) was the first company to introduce blade servers. Headquartered in Woodlands, just north of Houston and the old Compaq. I think they intially got a lot of smart engineers from Compaq, but they're probably laid off by now. They had the misfortune of starting their business amidst the tech slump. The other big companies (Dell, IBM, HP) have been quick to spoof RLX and steal some of its thunder. Guess it helps that you have services and other technology to sell to a customer. After all, buying things from one company can be simpler than having multiple suppliers with different contracts, etc.

How unfortunate it is that the first-to-market is sometimes never the market leader.

Blades? Lots of them out now:

Sun
RLX
Silicon Mechanics
HP
Dell
IBM

...though I think I've seen it somewhere else...

It's already been done, and done better than a stack of these little CD-sized guys. The RLX deals are pretty damn amazing. I've had occasion to see two different models in the past two years, and have been impressed each time. My favorite has to the be Transmeta-based blades, just because the consume like 9 watts when sitting idle. They're cool enough that you'd have a hard time telling they were powered on.

What makes something like an RLX chassis better than stacking in "little PCs" is that RLX has some very nice mgmt software that comes with the whole unit. Basically, you dedicate one blade to do mgmt stuff, and the rest (whether you have one chassis or ten) can all be managed by it. You can have all the blades sitting there blank, and remotely (and programmatically) boot up and then re-image any number of them with Windows or Linux, in any configuration you've set up. (The OS images are actually just tarballs of previously-installed operating systems you've set up and saved. So you can dedicate one blade to OS imaging duty, put Red Hat in whater config you want on it, upgrade the kernel or whatever and then push that tarball out to a "test blade" if you want to see how your apps runs.)

You also get more hardware with something like an RLX. The newer ones have dual fibre channel NICs, dual Gig Ethernet NICS, and a dedicated backplane network for "out of band" management, and an optional layer 2 switch for that chassis. That all means that you can make a cluster out of them really easily. And it means that you can do away with their hard drives, boot off the net and use network disk everywhere while still keeping them as "individual" servers. One more bonus: you don't have a cabling nightmare, and don't really need KVM for every server. They are also designed with heat output in mind. You can literally fill a 42U rack full of them (which is a total of like 330-something P3s) and still power it up. They're hot-swappable, too.

I don't work for RLX, I've just seen them up close a couple times (we're demoing one unit now, and will get another soon). If you are thinking of making a cheap cluster, or just want a lot of PCs in a little space withut a management headache, you might do well to look into RLX.

-B

These guys do.

RLX Technologies has a server based on Transmeta Crusoe chip and it can hold 24 CPUs in 3U space, giving 336 processors per rack (and 336GB of RAM and 27TB of HDD :)

See promo here..

From their website: "The RLX System 300ex chassis holds 24 ServerBlades in 3U and supports the new ServerBlade 1200i." -- and it's even based on Linus's Transmeta chipset!

Not sure how Sun's server can top this... somebody help me out here.

Might be an idea for RLX to make a chassie that can use standard motherboards (ITX?)and 3.5 disks.

Before I continue--I'm the lead IT architecture guy at RLX, not in marketing or sales. One of the the things I do is give our products (both hardware and software) a spin as a "customer" of RLX. With control tower I'm able to manage a HUGE number of servers per administrator--many times over the industry standard (ie. the textbook ratios of 8-to-1 windows servers, etc...) And these are NOT in a cluster configuration...they do different things like web serving, DHCP, DNS, printing, IDS, firewalls, etc... We've got 81 servers in our primary NOC being managed by two administrators (well...one admin, plus 1/2 my time.) Plus with CT, provisioning servers (new ones, or for ones that have failed) is a snap--and takes mere minutes. Can you install a fully configured Win2K server in less than 10 minutes?

It's the savings on operational costs which are really compelling for all blade servers, but, yes, it _is_ a hard sell to some. The funny thing is, once most see a demo of our management software in real life--their jaw drops. This is the stuff that originally attracted me to RLX (in TX of all places!) over two years ago, before you (the wider "you") even heard the term "blade server."

Anyways...I tried to keep the propaganda to a minimum, but had to jump in with a reply there. Like I said, I'm in IT, so I don't have the price list handy. If you want, get the sales number off our web site, and give them a call to find out. We DO have demo gear, too--if you're really serious about checking it out.

(Now, I need to duck from the things that our sales & support folks will be throwing at my noggin!)

The usual applies--these are my opinions. It's the weekend, so my employer didn't pay me for them so they're mine, damnit!

Before I continue--I'm the lead IT architecture guy at RLX, not in marketing or sales. One of the the things I do is give our products (both hardware and software) a spin as a "customer" of RLX. With control tower I'm able to manage a HUGE number of servers per administrator--many times over the industry standard (ie. the textbook ratios of 8-to-1 windows servers, etc...) And these are NOT in a cluster configuration...they do different things like web serving, DHCP, DNS, printing, IDS, firewalls, etc... We've got 81 servers in our primary NOC being managed by two administrators (well...one admin, plus 1/2 my time.) Plus with CT, provisioning servers (new ones, or for ones that have failed) is a snap--and takes mere minutes. Can you install a fully configured Win2K server in less than 10 minutes?

It's the savings on operational costs which are really compelling for all blade servers, but, yes, it _is_ a hard sell to some. The funny thing is, once most see a demo of our management software in real life--their jaw drops. This is the stuff that originally attracted me to RLX (in TX of all places!) over two years ago, before you (the wider "you") even heard the term "blade server."

Anyways...I tried to keep the propaganda to a minimum, but had to jump in with a reply there. Like I said, I'm in IT, so I don't have the price list handy. If you want, get the sales number off our web site, and give them a call to find out. We DO have demo gear, too--if you're really serious about checking it out.

(Now, I need to duck from the things that our sales & support folks will be throwing at my noggin!)

The usual applies--these are my opinions. It's the weekend, so my employer didn't pay me for them so they're mine, damnit!

280? feh. We do 336. Not that I'm biased or anything (I'm an employee of RLX), but to top that off--IMHO our management software beats the pants off of that of *cough* *cough* others.

Oh, but then wouldn't this or this be a significantly better choice?

the serverblades are RLX serverblades. They come in Intel and Transmeta (x86) flavors. Can run linux and all your favorite compilers.

The photo in the article talking about Green Destiny shows RLX shelves in the background.

-ez