Slashdot Mirror
Open Blade Servers?
Greg Smith points to this ZDNet story on new Intel chips aimed at blade servers, writing "Proprietary blade servers are coming on strong from IBM, Dell and HP. Where are the open blade servers? How did Google roll out 10,000 servers at such a low cost?"
i should probably have something meaningful to say...
course i should also not do it anonymously and take it like a man.
but i wont.
cornjchob
Intel prepping P3 chips for blade servers
By John G. Spooner
ZDNet News
March 19, 2002
Intel is slinging new chips for blade servers.
The chipmaker will introduce on Tuesday a new low-power Pentium III chip for dense blade servers that will let computer makers put two processors onto a single blade. To date, Intel has only marketed chips for single-processor blades.
The new chip, the second of two planned low-power processors for blade servers, essentially rounds out Intel's product line. The chipmaker's first server blade chip, a 700MHz ultralow-voltage Pentium III, launched last November. The new chip runs at 800MHz, and will be available in dual-processor server blade products due later this year from Dell Computer and Fujitsu- Siemens, Intel said.
"We've got the product line across the board now that the blade market is looking for," said Lisa Hambrick, director of enterprise-processor marketing in Intel's Enterprise Processor Group.
Server blades got their name because of their design. A blade server typically resembles a circuit board more than anything else. They're made to be stacked vertically. These types of servers are growing in popularity for more mundane tasks such as delivering Web pages or housing protective firewalls because they use less floor space and electricity than racks of traditional servers.
Server blades also share a power supply, cables and memory, which further cuts down on costs and space. Although the down server market has dampened sales, analysts believe blades will eventually form a substantial part of the market.
As their name suggests, blades with ultralow-voltage processors are the smallest and least power hungry of the bunch. Typically, a six-foot-tall rack can accommodate up to 42 1.75-inch thick servers. Some blade-server cabinets with ultralow-voltage processors can fit 100 or more servers in the same size rack.
While the new chips consume more power, they provide enhanced performance features. Aside from its dual- processor capabilities and faster clock speed, the new 800MHz server blade chip offers a faster 133MHz system bus and supports a larger amount of faster memory, compared with Intel's current low-voltage server blade chip. The new chip can support up to 4GB of PC 133 memory, otherwise known as SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM), which is the most common DRAM type available today. The other chips could handle only 2GB of memory at a time.
The new chip also consumes less power than a typical Pentium III or Xeon server chip would--about 11.2 watts-- allowing PC makers to create a dual-processor server blade that uses less power and produces less heat.
Some of the first ultradense blade server makers used Transmeta's Crusoe chip, which consumed less power than Intel's 700MHz Pentium III chip for blades.
However, the chips did not offer dual-processor support or certain features generally expected of servers, such as error-correcting code memory. Corporate IT buyers also balked at buying servers based around a new chip in an era of tighter budgets, according to executives at server companies promoting Transmeta-based servers. As a result, vendors such as RLX Technologies--Transmeta's original blade customer--have begun offering products based on Intel chips as well.
Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems is also expected to launch a pair of blade-server lines, one based on Intel's chips and another on its own UltraSparc processor.
Both Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer offer server blades based on Intel's 700MHz blade-server chip. PC makers such as Dell are expected to adopt the chip in products that will begin shipping in the next two to three months, Intel said.
The new 800MHz chip, which uses ServerWorks' LE3 chipset, will list for $289 each in 1,000 unit quantities
:flip:
Whoops wrong board
I got an ad for AMD server solutions for that story..
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
But where are they?
Try and imagine.
Goatse.cx
I'm drunk as fuck.
1. Tea bag - As you are sitting on a girl's face, repeatedly dip your scrotum in and out of her mouth, similar to a tea bag in a cup of hot water. An old favorite.
2. Hot Lunch - While receiving head from a woman, you shit on her chest. (a.k.a. the Cleveland Steamer)
3. The Stranger - Sitting on your hand until it falls asleep and then jerking off, eliciting the feeling of a hand job from someone else.
4. Donkey Punch - Banging a girl doggy style and then moments before you cum, sticking your dick in her ass, and then punching her in the back of the head. This gives a tremendous sensation, but for it to work correctly, the girl must be knocked out so that her asshole tightens up.
5. Golden Shower - Any form of peeing on a girl. (aka: watersports)
6. Pearl Necklace - Well known. Whenever you cum on the neck/cleavage area of a girl, it takes on the look of beautiful jewelry.
7. Coyote - This occurs when you wake up in the room of a nasty skank and you know you've got to give her the slip. However, you realize that your arm is wrapped around her. Therefore, you must gnaw off your own arm to get out of this situation. Can be very painful.
8. Purple Mushroom - This occurs when a woman is giving you oral sex and you withdraw your penis in order to poke it back into her cheek. It should leave a lasting impression similar to a purple mushroom.
9. The Flying Camel - A personal favorite. As she is lying on her back and you are hammering her from your knees, you carefully balance yourself without using your arms to prop yourself up. You then to flap your arms and let out a long, shrieking howl. Strictly a class move.
10. Double Fishhook - From the doggy-style position, you hook your pinky fingers in her mouth and pull back to achieve deeper penetration.
11. The Ram - Again, you're attacking from behind, when you start ramming her head against the wall in a rhythmic motion. The force of the wall should allow for deeper penetration. Very handy for those lulls in penile sensitivity.
12. Dog in a Bathtub - This is the proper name for when you attempt to insert your nuts into a girl's ass. It is so named because it can be just as hard as keeping a dog in the tub while giving it a bath.
13. The Bronco - Back to reality with this classic. You start by going doggy style and then just when she is really enjoying it, you grab onto her tits as tightly as possible and yell another girl's name. This gives you the feeling of riding a bronco as she tries to buck you off.
14. Pink Glove - This frequently happens during sex when a girl is not wet enough. When you pull out to give her the money, the inside of her twat sticks to your hog. Thus, the pink glove.
15. The Fountain of You - While sitting on her face and having her eat your ass, jerk off like a madman. Build up as much pressure as possible before releasing, spewing like a venerable geyser all over her face, neck and tits. (Better in her bed)
16. New York Style Taco - Anytime when you are so drunk that when you go down on her, you puke on her box. Happy trails!
17. Dirty Sanchez - While banging a girl doggy style, quickly stick 2 fingers deep into her starfish, then reach around and wipe the residue on her upper lip, providing her a mustache.
18. Western Grip - When jerking off, turn your hand around, so that your thumb is facing towards you. It is the same grip that rodeo folks use; hence, western.
19. The Blumpkin - You need to find a real tramp to do this right. It involves having her suck you off while you're on the shitter.
20. The Bismark - Another one involving oral sex. Right before you are about to spew, pull out and shoot all over her face. Follow that with a punch and smear the blood and jism together.
21. Jelly Doughnut - A derivation of the Bismark. All you have to do is punch her in the nose while you are getting head.
22. Woody Woodpecker - While a chick is sucking on your balls, repeatedly tap the head of your cock on her forehead.
23. Tossing salad - Well known by now. A prison act where one person is forced to chow starfish with the help of whatever condiments are available, i.e. Jello, jism, etc
24. The Fish Eye - Working from behind, you shove your finger in her pooper. Thereupon, she turns around in a one-eyed winking motion to see what the hell you are doing.
25. Tuna Melt - You're down on a chick, lapping away, and you discover that it's her time of the month. By no means do you stop though. When the whale spews, tartar sauce with a hint of raspberry smothers your face.
26. The Fur Ball - You're chomping away at some mighty Zena who has a mane between her legs the size of Lionel Richie's afro, when a mammoth fur ball gets lodged in your throat. You punch her.
27. The Chili Dog - You take a dump on the girl's chest and then titty fuck her.
28. Gaylord Perry - Going to only one knuckle during an anal probe is for wimps. Make this famous knuckle-ball pitcher proud and use multiple digits on that virgin corn hole. A minimum of 2 knuckles required (either on one finger or on multiple).
29. The Rear Admiral - An absolute blast. When getting a chick from behind (with both partners standing), make sure you don't let her grab onto anything when she is bent over. Then, drive your hips into her backside so that the momentum pushes her forward. The goal is to push her into a wall or table, or have her trip and fall on her face. You attain the status of Admiral when you can push her around the room without crashing into anything and not using your hands to grab onto her hips.
30. Glass Bottom Boat - Putting saran wrap over the skank's face and taking a dump.
31. Ray Bans - Put your nuts over her eye sockets while getting head. You're can is on her forehead. Yes, it may be anatomically impossible, but it is definitely worth a try.
32. The Snowmobile - When plugging a girl while she's on all fours, reach around and sweep out her arms so she falls on her face.
33. The Dutch Oven - Also well known. Whenever you fart while humping, pull the covers over her head. Don't let her out until all movement ceases.
34. Smoking Pole - Self Explanatory. Don't use fire.
35. Rusty Trombone - Getting the reacharound while getting your salad tossed. Also known as milking the prostate.
36. Turkey Shoot - When you're coming, come on her face and let it drip off her chin so it looks like that red shit on the turkey's chin.
37. Stovepiping - Taking it in the Tush.
38. Rusty Anchor - After a healthy term of the Stovepiping, the recipient gets to enjoy a good fudgesicle.
39. Sandpiper - A stovepiping on the local beach, desert, or playground sandbox. Also known as the Sandblast.
40. Lucky Pierre - the middle man in a three way buttfuck. Also known as the french sandwich.
41.Divortex- A mystical place into which old friends are sucked when a married couple splits up.
42.Blump- To suck someone's dick while they are taking a dump.
43.Bustard- A very rude bus driver.
44.Cold Faithful- Blowing your visibly-steaming load outside in the winter-time, like when you get your cock sucked on a ski-lift.
45.Grand pappy smash- To beat your meat so hardcore that it starts to chafe and bleed.
46.Esplanade- To attempt an explanation while drunk.
47.Flatulence- The emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
48.Butt Rodeo- When you're going at it with a girl, you flip her over real fast, start ramming her in the ass and yell as loud as possible "BUTT RODEO!" You then see how long you can ride her till she tosses ya off!
49.Bargoyle- The hideous old hair-spray hag who seems to live at your local watering hole. She usually smokes endlessly, spends hundreds of dollars a night on video-poker, and makes sexually threatening comments to frightened college freshmen.
50.Pasteurize- Once you get her hairy bush pasteurize, you got it licked!
51.Beerelevant- A point which does not seem to be particularly important, given enough beer
52.Mangry- Describing the anger of women who are angry at men, specifically. "She's such a bitch, she's just plain mangry."
53.Clitourist- A man who won't stop and ask for directions in bed. ie: "Because of his fouled foreplay, Suzy realized that her new boyfriend was no experienced bedroom traveler, but merely a clitourist."
54.Stuffucking- The act of "stuffing in" your limp, helpless member in hopes of getting it up. Potential causes: you're too drunk or she's too ugly. (see also; Fugly)
55.Antlers- Wide, flat, flapjack titties that come to a sharp point at the nipples.
56.The Flying Camel- A personal favorite. As she is lying on her back and you are hammering her on your knees, you very carefully move forward and prop yourself (without using your arms) on your dick while it is still inserted in her vertical seafood taco. You then proceed to flap your arms and let out a long shrieking howl, much like a flying camel. Strictly a classy move.
57.The Flaming Amazon- This one's for all you pyromaniacs out there. When you're screwing some chick, right when your about to cum, pull out and quickly grab the nearest lighter and set her pubes on fire, then extinguish the flames with your jizz!
58.The Screwnicorn -When a dyke puts her strap-on dildo on her forehead and proceeds to go at her partner like a crazed unicorn.
59.Split pissonality -When you're taking a leak and you get two streams out of the one hole!
60.A Short in the Cord- A "code" phrase used by the common man to refer to Testicular Tendon Tangle Syndrome. Ex. "Oh fuck! My nuts are killing me... I think I've got a short in the cord."
61.Old Jism Trail -The stream of semen oozing down the chin and chest of someone who has just finished fellating a senior citizen.
62.Abdicate -To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
63.Lymph -To walk with a lisp.
64.Anal Boot- An anal boot is when you take a pitcher of beer, everyone spits in it, someone stirs it with their cock and then the mixture is poured through the crack of a man ass into the waiting mouth of the loser of a bet or drinking game.
65.Australian Death Grip- The act of grabbing a woman by the haunches/crotch and staring deeply into her eyes until you're slapped or kissed. A recommended tactic for very crowded bars. Another great opportunity for wagering among friends.
66.Fumilingus -When a man (or woman) performs cunnilingus on a woman and she farts directly in his/her face.
67.Intoxicourse- Having sexual intercourse whilst piss-drunk.
68.Valsalva -The act of pinching shut (with thumb and forefinger) a woman's nose while receiving fellatio; most effective when employed just prior to the release point due to the gag reflex and ensuing swallow that the woman is forced to do to continue breathing. A great first date ploy, as it sets the stage for what the rules of engagement will be going forward.
69.Insta-gasm -Pre-mature ejaculation at the sight of a beautiful woman. ie: "She was so fine, I had an insta-gasm before I could get her clothes off!"
70.Manual Deconstipation -This is where you get out the hand cream and go in manually for the hammerhead by breaking it into smaller chunks and pulling it out a piece at a time.
71.Post Poodum Syndrome -The feeling of depression felt after successful removal of a hammerhead. The excitement has passed, and you must now find something else to occupy your time.
72.The Homolic Maneuver -Using your penis to dislodge an object blocking a choking victim's windpipe.
73.Pegging - having a female take you in the rear with a strap on.
74. The UnderDog - after a hard session at the gym, your armpit muscle begins to twitch; thus giving you the ability to jerk a guy off with your armpit muscle.
75. The Twinkler - when you are 69ing a girl and you shove your dick into mouth hard, and you watch her a-hole "twinkle" as she gags.
76. Angry dragon - This involves the girl giving the guy head and as he is about to cum slapping the girl on the back of the head causing the cum to come out her nose. Great care should be used to not slap her mouth shut.
77. Tony Danza - a takeoff of the donkey punch is called the Tony Danza. When you are about to cum while doing a girl from behind, you say "who's the boss?" and stick it in her ass. Before she says anything you shout "TONY DANZA!" and punch her in the back of the head.
78. Alaskan firedragon - another good take off is one of the angry dragon that is called the alaskan firedragon. When a girl is giving you a blowjob, cum in her mouth unexpectedly and plug up her mouth at the same time. Then whisper in her ear "i have syphilis" so she spews it out her nose.
79. The Walrus - when she's giving u a blowjob and u cum in her mouth unexpectadly, cover up her mouth and punch her in the stomach.
80. The Fat Lip - If you get poison ivy and finger a girl, her labia lips will swell. A la, the fat lip.
81. Sleeping Bag - If you're going down on a really fat girl, you pull her enormous stomach roll of fat over your head.
82. Hummer Bird - when a girl is giving a guy a hummer, and he's enjoying it, she bites on his bird.
83. Bloody Mary - when a drunk guy is going down on a girl and without even realizing it after he's done, he realizes Mary was very Bloody
84. The Houdini - this maneuver is accomplished while going at it doggy style. As you feel you are about to cum, you pull out and spit on the small of her back (making her think you've finished...). It's at the point when she turns around when *BAM!* You bust your load in her face (in the eye if you've got proper aiming techniques down.) Also known as the Doug Hennings and the David Copperfield.
85. Upperdecking - This one takes practice. This maneuver requires a toilet with a tank above it, like the ones in most homes. Instead of crapping in the bowl, you shit in the tank (i.e. upperdecking). Now don't flush. When the following victim flushes, the rancid waste fills the bowl. If you play your cards right, it may ferment
86. Journey into darkness - This is the most disturbing of all. It entails shitting into another person's asshole. Not for beginners.
87. Rocky Balboa - dont shower for 2 weeks, then diarrhea down her throat at any point during sexual contact.
88. Rocky Balboa Title Punch - same as the Rocky Balboa, but in that non-showering 2 weeks all you eat is corn.
I don't usually do this, but I have to give credit to Sascha and Zach for the next 2. I'm only doing this because they are my bosses kids...
89. The McDonald's Quick Draw - Get your girlfriend to talk dirty into the intercom, making the order guy start to beat off. Then while pulling up to the window, have her give you falatio till you are about to blow your beefy chunk-load. Upon pulling up to the window, tell your girl friend to yell "Draw!". Then on "three", both you and the guy blow your loads either on her or eachother.
90. Uncle Jemima - the typical dirty chef at your local Denny's or other low-class food establishment who occasionally becomes disgruntled, and takes out his frustration on your meal, via "the ass wipe" or the "French Toast Strut" seen in Road Trip.
91. Airtight - this is where a girl has a cock in each of her three holes, hence, airtight.
92. The Throne of Lightning - This is done by fucking a girl while you shit in a toilet. When you're going to blow your load, turn her over and dunk her head in the toilet, while she's bobbing for your turd plummet a river of semen in her ass. Not to be confused with "Ride the Lightning," a Metallica album
93. Abe Lincoln - You're getting a girl up the ass and give her a swift donkey punch to the back of her head, knocking her unconscious. You then turn her around and jerk off and blow your load all over her face. Then you shave her beaver and take the clippings and spread it where you jizzed on her, making a beard that looks like good ol Honest Abe's.
94. Thanksgiving - Just like the holiday, Thanksgiving is when you do a girl and then she puts her two big butt cheeks on your face like holiday hams. An overcooked thanksgiving is similar to this but instead of just putting the cheeks on your head she farts on it too.
95. Emeril - When your'e doing a chick doggy style (either hole) and you pull out, cum in your hand and then while you throw it on her back you yell "BAM", Emeril style, hence the name.
96. Zombie - Right before you come while getting a blowjob, you withdraw from her mouth, and shoot her in the eye unexpectedly. This causes her to stumble about the room feeling around for a towel.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of those...
Really, though, the fact that this blade server consumes so much less electricity would be very meaningful to me. The server room at our school was not intended to be a server room. The wiring also is lacking, and every once in a while the breakers go pop!
BTW, is it possible to use this in a laptop? Just imagine the power (or less consumption thereof) if you packed two processors in parallel on a laptop...
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
My barber uses an open blade shaver, but I don't think it would be safe around all the wires in a server room. To be honest though, I don't see why you'd need any kind of blade in a server.
As if ZDNet would get slashdotted. Dont even THINK about modding this one up.
If you're too lazy to read the article and don't know what a blade server is...
Server blades got their name because of their design. A blade server typically resembles a circuit board more than anything else. They're made to be stacked vertically. These types of servers are growing in popularity for more mundane tasks such as delivering Web pages or housing protective firewalls because they use less floor space and electricity than racks of traditional servers. Server blades also share a power supply, cables and memory, which further cuts down on costs and space. Although the down server market has dampened sales, analysts believe blades will eventually form a substantial part of the market.
Maybe I'm retarded, but I didn't immediately picture exactly what a blade server was when I saw the name...so there it is.
A blade server is a hardware product, it really has nothing todo with software, outside of the Operating System Clustering/Scaling functionality.
Google does not use blade servers, last I knew it was just a large amount of x86 boxes running Linux.
Open Source hardware? Does that even make sense? Either have drivers (or release the specs) that allow your hardware to be used on an Open Source operating system, or dont.
Want an "Open Source Blade Server"? Yeah, thats called an HP with Clustered Linux on each blade...
The usage of Pentium IIIs for these monsters of serious computing only goes to show how much of a badly designed marketing ploy the Pentium IV is.
That could be dangerous. Over 50 people* die per month in server blade accidents. Sadly, these needless deaths could've been prevented by simple server blade cover kits.
Only YOU can prevent fatal server room mishaps.
Keep those blades covered, kids.
This is a public service message brought to you by Sally Shark, official mascot for server room safety.
*note: statistics may be fictional.
Peepoh:One hot dog in a bun, comin' right up!
YourMissionForToday:Go and steal stuff now!
YourMissionForToday:with a forklift!
Peepoh:Yes, Master of Forkliftery! I must obey!
YourMissionForToday:but don't get it too heavy, or it could weigh down your forklift!
Peepoh:Not the Power Jackoff 2000! Let's get a bunch of blow up dolls and dress them up in graduation robes, and leave them in Church!@
Peepoh:then we steal the stations of the cross with our forklifts!
YourMissionForToday:Yeah, then we blame it on the blowup dolls!
Peepoh:yeah! and it'll work because the night before we'll replace their security tapes with tapes we've edited of the dolls perpetrating the crime!
YourMissionForToday:Yeah, with zombies dressed up as Lenin and Stalin helping them!
Peepoh:no, the zombies ARE Lenin and Stalin!
YourMissionForToday:Great idea, but they wear party hats and the blow up dolls only get to wear graduation hats
Peepoh:yeah, at first.
YourMissionForToday:and there's a jesus piñata!
Peepoh:but then we DRILL the fuck out of their zombie asses with our big industrial drills!
YourMissionForToday:right, and then we look like the heroes!
YourMissionForToday: (we have to dress like mexican peasants)
Peepoh:yeah, because the cops would arrive on the scene just in time to witness us spraying zombie innards all over the tabernacle!
YourMissionForToday:Yeah, and then we just post like mexican construction workers who stopped by to pray to our lady of guadalupe on our way home after the night shift!
Peepoh:oh good thinking! that explains why we have the big industrial drills at church!
YourMissionForToday:That, and cause we were going to get them blessed for St. Blaises' Day!
Peepoh:When we drill into people's throats!
YourMissionForToday:And then we claim that we're Michael the Archangel after we do that...no, wait, you're Michael the Archangel and I'm Captain America!
Peepoh:no, you're Leonardo the Archangel, John's Donatello the Archangel, and Robert is Raphael the Archangel!
YourMissionForToday:Cowabunga, d00d! You're right!
It's well-known and well-documented that Intel chips just don't perform up to par with equivalent chips from their main counterpart, AMD (Advanced Micro Devices).
Why?
Simply put, most modern processor are said to be pipelined; that is, rather than executing instructions sequentially, they execute several different instructions at a time, but just in different stages. And, overall, any AMD chip that you have will get just as much work done per clock cycle than an Intel processor at the same clock rate.
So, a 1.4GHz Athlon from AMD will benchmark much more quickly and give better results than any 1.4GHz-clock Intel chip.
Furthermore, they're a hell of a lot cheaper than Intel chips, and if you use a proper heat sink and fan(s), they'll last you many, many years.
Content coming soon (no, really!)
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Well, I am sure free advertising has a lot do with the Google roll out.
The <insert powered by DELL,COMPAQ/YOMAMA) tags will start appearing all over google.
I also reckon they were free or at pretty much close to cost. Companies know what there doing. Cost on that kinda margin is probably at 200 bucks a pop straight outta the factory when you consider markup is about 500 percent on computer parts. Remember buying in bulk is power.
Example, you can get a pc on pricewatch with a 20 gig drive, 256 megs of ram, and a giga or more processor for, 250, so think about it.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
So a balde server is sort of like a pie but in reverse. Instead of making it smaller you make it bigger by adding some more stuff, but you still share the same pan.
"What we have here is a failure to communicate"
The Warden, Cool Hand Luke
Is it bad to when you see stuff like this to think how you can use it to further boost your Setiathome scores
..........FULL STOP.
Blade Servers - Kickin' vampire ass (just in time for Halloween) and servin' web pages. That's just too slick.
Blade servers are not supposed to be stacked vertically, and you can fit *way* more than 42 blade servers in a single rack. The author is thinking of 1U boxes, which have only been around for say... 10 years!
i ndex-bl.html
look at : http://www.compaq.com/products/servers/platforms/
280+ servers in a rack.
The article is quite old now - March 19 - and HP appears to favour the blade servers from the former compaq. That being said the advantage that blade servers give is that they save a great deal of space, and make cabling much easier. In essence you can stuff a lot of proccessors in a rack, also put in a small disk farm, network switch using copper or fiber, and away you go.
Semper ubi sub ubi
I especially love how, after the marketing ploy for AMD, he writes a REPLY TO HIS OWN POST telling moderators to check his posting history... OMG... classic!
The fastest AMD part listed in Pricewatch is the 2400+ (1.93 GHz) for $191. The equivalent Pentium 4 (2.4 GHz) is $188 (i.e. less expensive than AMD). Furthemore there are substantially faster Pentium parts available (up to 2.8 GHz now).
Nope. The 2600+ (2.2 GHz) has been available for two weeks now and is $195 at NewEgg I believe, which includes from FedEx 2nd Day Saver shipping. The equivalent Pentium is 2.7 GHz, which, with the huge heatsink that it needs, is $229 at NewEgg last time I checked.
-egg troll
I'm currently involved in a server consolidation project where the customer has dictated that they want to see some blade. Our primary platforms are some kickin' Intel servers (8-way 1.6GHz, 8GB RAM, max 16-way 64GB) running VMWare ESX, but the customer is insisting on seeing some blade. I am personally unimpressed by them. You need to make sure that your apps can and are built to either cluster or failover cleanly when you get blade involved. Or just not run any mission critical stuff on it.
I prefer the VMWare ESX on our nearly-non-stop Intel hardware, the x440.
Intelligent Life on Earth
I cant believe this made front page /.
while you play NCAA football, I play with your girlfriend.
Ok, this statement confuses me. IBM's BladeCenter line is based on Intel's new standard for blade servers, which means that the blade rack should be able to accept blades from ANY manufacturer that follows the new Intel server blade standard.
HP/Compaq is also (supposedly) planning to use this standard for their new blade servers, so you'll be able to use HP blades in an IBM rack, and vice versa.
The only server blade company that seems to be sticking with a "proprietary" design is RLX technologies, which uses a more compact blade system that was originally designed to use Transmeta Crusoe processors. They also have Intel blades as well, which use a simular RLX proprietary form factor.
We won't see open blade servers for quite a while, if ever. Normal servers are only "open" because they use a common set of interconnects (standard power, ps/2 keyboard, 100BaseT), etc. On a blade server, you have to unify all of those interconnects in a hot-swappable fashion. The result? A customized connector and backplane architecture.
In addition, there's no incentive for companies to open a standard for blade servers - they'll make more money by selling the chassis and blades, as well as the management software that is generally required for these types of servers.
As far as Google goes, they rolled out their infrastructure for such a low cost because they did the following things:
1) didn't use blade servers(more on that in a sec)
2) bought in large quantities
3) bought generic/semi-generic servers (by which I mean "not IBM")
Not using blade servers was a sharp idea because the real advantages of blade servers come in certain particular situations. These include where power/heat/space is really expensive or where you need a lot of hosts without a lot of performance (like QA, staging and development environments). Remember, that while they use less space, power, etc., they also use laptop/low-power cpus and hard drives, so the performance can be lower, especially for i/o intensive operations. If you're not hugely space-constrained, using 1U servers will save you money in the long run.
Thanks,
Matt
me@mzi.to
Uhh That was a real question. Could someone please answer??
"What we have here is a failure to communicate"
The Warden, Cool Hand Luke
what about ones that are just a little bit slower than the rest of them? How about Sling Blade servers.
Thanks, I'll be here all week, and don't forget to tip your waitresses.
Where Linux will really shine is the new PICMG-2.16 standard. It's an enhancement/alternative to CompactPCI where a chassis uses Ethernet signalling on the backplane instead of CompactPCI signals. That means a single chassis can have an intel, Sun, and/or motorola blade in the same chassis and they communicate via TCP/IP instead of hardware-specific signalling. It also means that a Linux-based blade can work in *any* manufacturers chassis. This removes a big barrier of entry for the Linux in the telecom market.
Other cool things about PICMG 2-16 Blades:
- Blades (like ethernet hosts) are more easily hot-swappable
- Depending on the chassis switch, bus speeds could approach 24GB/s in the near future
- Device drivers need only speak TCP/IP (one driver works on multiple blade operating systems)
For more info see: The Next Big Thing (pdf) and there might be something here since these guys designed part of the spec.Just because the blades are "proprietary" doesn't mean they're bad. They're denser, thus easier to physically manage and run with lower power requirements than other types of servers. Just because they weren't created by a committee of "free-thinking" open source advocates doesn't mean they're useless to companies who need more processing power at lower cost.
Seriously, the commercial market offers added value in their products that still lacks in many open source projects.
Well, I cannot believe that there are no pictures of those 10,000 x86 boxes that Google has. C'mon I bet there are at least 50% of those Google employees that check /. regularly.
Anyone?
From there, they figured out a functional failover system and set up four geographically distributed data centers.
Oh, and they coded up a search engine thing at the same time.
you moron. learn to speak.
No, because honestly the question didn't make any sense.
High Seti scores will never get you a girl- you can just give up on that right now. In fact, you can just give up the whole concept of you ever getting a girl without paying first.
I'm imaging a new market on the horizon for low-powered PCs. Laptops that can run for 6 hours+ without heavy batteries, and the sub-micro ATX form factor systems. The latter are an interesting case, useful for roll-your-own multimedia appliances and servers that you can leave on but won't chomp on your power budget. I have a PC I keep on constantly in a corner and use for my firewall, mailserver etc. I used an underclocked celeron to keep the heat down and to keep the power usage to a minimum. But it could do so much more if it wasn't so lightweight. The LP Pentium III would easily outpace what I currently have.
So, it would be cool to see these chips and motherboard commoditzed for just this use. For a bit of extra money up front you can get double your money back in power savings (vs a high-power CPU). There aren't many sub 11W IA processors that can get the job done.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
F u c k y o u.
the 2600+ got announced a long time ago, but the last FOUR amd cpu release have been paper launches where the product came out several weeks late.
the athlon xp 2600 oem cpu is not available anywhere outside of pre-order, and its lowest listed price on pricewatch is $285 - oem, 30 day warranty, no heat sink/fan.
Choco-pipe. C H O C O - P I P E. Yes. You heard it. You know you want it. Have some yummy choco. In a pipe. Yum.
42 dual P4 2400 mhz servers or 208 P3 700mhz blades 42 dual P4 2400 mhz servers = 201600mhz 208 p3 700mhz blades = 145600 mhz Wouldn't the objective be to pack as much power as possible in the rack?
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
True Open Standard Blade Servers are just around the corner. Up until now the current offerings by RLX, HP and IBM have been proprietary blade server designs. The next generation blade servers will be based on an open hardware standards where different vendors blades can be swapped with each other the same way that Compact-PCI is a standard blade design where all cpu boards are interchangeable with each other.
Low power CPU's are needed for the current crop of blade server designs since they forgot to deal with any heat management. The current blade designs rely entirely on airflow across the cpu package for cooling in a 2U or 3U high blade with 0.7" between each blade. Oops!!... how many blades can you stuff into a rack with each processor pulling 30 - 60 watts each and keep the temp down to 1K cpus per 42U rack) while still using Xeon and other x86 processors that produce over 60W of heat each.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
I just checked out the rackable systems site and the 1RU 1000 server looks IDENTICAL to sun's LX50 intel server. Same specs and identical physical boxes. I got my LX50 free when we bought a V480, now I know where to get another one cheaper :)
-- Chris Martin, System Administrator
"A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing; his eyes are rolled back in his head.
The other guy whips out his cellphone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: 'My friend is dead! What can I do?'
The operator, in a calm, soothing voice, says: 'Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.'
There is a silence; then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: 'Okay, now what?' "
The really interesting thing is that as it is used it appears to be faster than the same clock speed pentium. What? you say. How can this be, since transmeta has a rep for being slow.
Well it truns out that for scientific applications, ones where you tend to sit in tight loops a lot the thing is faster. It's meta chips compile the intel instruructions into its internal processor code. Once the overhead of compiling is over its faster internally than a pentium 3
The reason it got a bad rep for being slow is that for GUI type applications where the code is running all over the place and never doing the same thing for very long, it loses out.
given the incredible stability (120 days no reboot), the increacing speed of the transmeta chips (1.2 Ghz), and the extreme low power, high density and no need for special cooling these things may revolutionize scientific and industrial computuing. But they may not dent the desktop market for raw power in GUI applications.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I just love Moz's "View Selection Source".
Applications?
1. Citrix farm. They're NOT disk intensive. You can do load balancing on them. If one goes down the ICA client only has to hit reconnect. .. back up no biggy, nobody sees or knows the difference.
2. Web service farm. One server goes down (MS), kernel panics for some reason...remote reboot
3. Novell (or NT) clusters. Exchange or Groupwise. Box dies / need to upgrade..
4. Home control system..Building control system. have 2-6 blades controlling different things..
there's a lot of benefit from cheap blade dual proc boxes..
= Grow a brain...
First of all, the power consumption of an AMD XP running 1600Mhz (or even a 1600+) uses significantly more power than two of these 800Mhz CPU's. Talking about one CPU is one thing, but 40? Or 200? Now you're talking about enough heat generated to cause spontaneous combustion. Low power is a good thing.
Also, it is not just the Mhz that determines the usefulness of a given configuration. Case in point, for many large multi-user database applications the number of concurrent processes (so many per CPU based on the app itself) that the system can do is much more important than the clock speed of the CPU's. Hence the need for dual, quad and oct servers and clustering with shared storage.
Moekandu
"It is a sad time when a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs."
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The notion of "open" makes sense for hardware, although it is slightly different than from software. "Open" hardware that is documented, hardware that conforms to standards, hardware that has well-defined interfaces for software, hardware that is at least licensed under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. RS232C, parallel ports, PC104, PCI, ISA, USB, IDE, etc., all can be considered reasonably open. Stuff that comes only from a single company, requires proprietary drivers, etc., is not open.
An "open" standard for blade servers would be nice. And, in fact, there are such standards: passive PCI backplanes, networking backplanes, and EuroBoards. Look around the web--there are plenty of systems to build open blade servers on--servers that are open in terms of both hardware and software.
Obviously this guy is talking from experience.
How did Google roll out 10,000 servers at such a low cost?
Certainly not by using blade servers. Contrary to popular belief, blade servers cost more tran their non-blade equivalents. Just like notebooks vs. laptops. Their selling points are (in some vendors' opinions) integrated management and supposed flexibility.
Irregardless is a word
enough said
I wonder whether we will see a small blade housing being sold for desktop use. A box that sits under your desk and holds between one and four blades (possibly made to look like a single machine with MOSIX). In other words could the 'blade' form factor become a rival for ATX?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Compaq makes a good point in suggesting Blade servers reduce cabling by 80% (Gah! I hate cabling KVMs)!. Ethernet in the backplane... can't wait for that. Perhaps we'll loose the obligatory eth ports on CPCI/Blade systems and just slide in a managed switches or routers.
How do I know? Because they dump all of their heat (at least from their older systems) into our cage. Bless their little hearts. I believe their newer systems are from Rackable Systems in the South Bay. Rackable Systems
It also means that a Linux-based blade can work in *any* manufacturers chassis. This removes a big barrier of entry for the Linux in the telecom market.
Power Appliance is already available, running Oracle 9i on Linux on up to 48 dual-processor (PIII, 800-1200 Mhz) blades in a single chassis, and the software to manage them.
Yes, remember Transmeta's Crusoe processor?
http://www.rlx.com - they're usually at LinuxWorld showing off their blade server units. They sell them with either Pentium III chips or Crusoe chips.
Pretty cool stuff..
Wouldn't the objective be to pack as much power as possible in the rack?
But seriously: no. Given the lack of real virtualization, there are a lot of applications where the thing most needed is as many separate logical systems, with processing power being a secondary consideration (as long as it's up to some usually quite modest measure).
But even for applications where raw processing power is all-important it isn't as simple as multiplying clock_speed * n_CPUs. You did that and found the blades coming in at about 3/4 the score of the PIV rack. But... isn't that about the same as the ratio of useful work per PIV clock to PIII clock? Of course, it varies, depending on what you're doing. Perhaps the PIV rack would win in a compute farm wher the load is tilted heavily towards floating point work. For applications that involve more integer & conditional branch work - compiling code, running a web server, email, database, etc. - the PIII's clock cycles are worth at least as much more than the PIV's to make up for the difference you have discovered.
But if you don't care about any of this, then don't let me deter you. Go right ahead and reward Intel's marketing buffoons for making you focus on a simple but misleading criteria. They'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
1. Start with a 24" rack, 72" tall. Rip the doors off the front and back.
2. Get sheet-metal 24" trays to fit into the rack. Mount them every 2U, on both the front and back of the rack. Leave a few U open in the middle of the rack for your switch and KVM.
3. Contract a company to build you custom power supplies that are 1U tall, use 90w of power, and only have 1 ATX connector and 1 molex hookup for a hard drive.
4. Put two Tyan dual-PIII mini-ATX motherboards w/ onboard LAN and video side-by-side on each tray. Slap two 1ghz PIII's in there with good passive heatsinks. Add a small amount of RAM (128-256mb) and strap a 10-20gb hard drive to the free space on the tray using a velcro strap.
5. Cluster 'em up! Heat is a HUGE problem, even with using the relatively-cold PIII's instead of P4's or Athlon MP's.
After seeing the Ashburn facility in person a year or so ago, I figured out that it would have cost about $700 per node to build the cluster. Considering it was an approximately 960-node setup, it was most likely around $700,000 for the 1920-processor cluster. That's REALLY freakin' cheap!
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
Is it just me or does it seem that intel blade servers are a dumb idea. Honestly using old generations of processors that were hot enough to cook eggs seems retarded. Why not use a chip that is fast and low power like what the RISC people do. Honestly this task seems well suited to MIPS, PPC, or SPARC chips not x86. Why use an inappropriate part that complicates this design. I think IBM should build blades with their new 970 proc, which will be probably as fast as anything on the market but uses only 10w power.
One major limiting factor is a 500W per square foot limit in most hosting facilities (that's why a lot of their systems are still PIII based). But if a low-power blade cost only 20% more per "MIP", it might still be cheaper to pay the server facility for the extra cooling and power.
They said the HP/IBM/Dell salesmen just cry because there's no way those vendors can compete with the cheapest daily far-East motherboard import prices. The only salesmen who must like Google are the ones who sell them the diesel locomotives (err. backup power generators) when they exceed the power limit of some hosting facility.
But seriously: no. Given the lack of real virtualization, there are a lot of applications where the thing most needed is as many separate logical systems, with processing power being a secondary consideration (as long as it's up to some usually quite modest measure).
VMware,Linux, Windows 2k/xp. Software is easily and cheaply upgraded, hardware is not.
But even for applications where raw processing power is all-important it isn't as simple as multiplying clock_speed * n_CPUs. You did that and found the blades coming in at about 3/4 the score of the PIV rack. But... isn't that about the same as the ratio of useful work per PIV clock to PIII clock? Of course, it varies, depending on what you're doing. Perhaps the PIV rack would win in a compute farm wher the load is tilted heavily towards floating point work. For applications that involve more integer & conditional branch work - compiling code, running a web server, email, database, etc. - the PIII's clock cycles are worth at least as much more than the PIV's to make up for the difference you have discovered.
I also conservatively used 2.4 ghz p4's and not 2.8's. The p3 does not perform better clock for clock than a p4. The northwood core was a slug compared to the p3, but the williamette core is not, especially when combined with RDRAM or DDR. The new low power p3 is still stuck with pc133 memory and that is a serious drawback on any system.
But if you don't care about any of this, then don't let me deter you. Go right ahead and reward Intel's marketing buffoons for making you focus on a simple but misleading criteria. They'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
$289 for the new 800mhz chips, $194 for a 2.4 ghz p4. So with the new low power chips, you are giving intel $60,112, using the the p4, you are giving them, $8148. How much more electricity is the p4 going to use over the p3 during it's serviceable lifetime. Not to mention that the cpu is not the primary source of power drain, the hdd is. Like I said, do the math, the numbers do not favor the low power chips.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
A slightly less open blade, but still not bad is the RLX 800i, which also runs LinuxBIOS, although RLX is not officially supporting it.
Those "Open Blades" are out there, but journalists usually don't get much beyond Dell, Compaq, etc. so they always miss the interesting stuff. I guess it is too much work or the deadlines are too short to get a lot of information into these articles.
ron
... beware. There's something worse out tonight?
01100110011010010111001001110011011101000010000001 11000001101111011100110111010000000000 (first binary post)
If you're using your own real estate, it's pretty easy to power the things, but if you're buying commercial hosting space, blade servers and 1U rack servers quickly start running into problems with electricity. The problem is that Intel/AMD CPUs are fairly power-intensive, and increasing the density by a factor of 5-20 over traditional PC designs also increases the amount of power that a rack of servers needs to levels beyond what the typical hosting center is designed for. If you're getting a rack with 2 20-amp circuits, you've got 4KW to play with - doesn't go very far if you've got to feed 200 or 336 Xeon chips, and for that matter, isn't really ideal for 42 1U rack-mounted boxes, if you want to have redundant power supplies and you're burning 75W per CPU plus some more power for the disk drives.
And of course, all those watts of heat require cooling. If you're planning to do it, have a serious talk with your real estate suppliers.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Getting the heat out won't be a problem if you can't get the electricity in to power them. If you're using your own real estate, it's one thing, but if you're actually using 60KW of electricity in one rack, that's about how much power a typical colo center provides for 10-40 racks of servers, depending on how you're counting redundant power feeds. If you're trying to fit that many processors in one rack, and using heavy-power Xeons instead of low-power Transmetas, you need to start looking at room airflow and not just in-box airflow. The obvious solution is to imitate a Cray-2, and use Fluorinert or some other liquid fluorocarbon coolant piped in from a big honking Air Conditioner outside your building, possibly combined with some kind of gas turbine to turn some of that waste heat back into electricity.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A cow is a completely automated milk-manufacturing machine. It is encased
in untanned leather and mounted on four vertical, movable supports, one at
each corner. The front end of the machine, or input, contains the cutting
and grinding mechanism, utilizing a unique feedback device. Here also are
the headlights, air inlet and exhaust, a bumper and a foghorn.
At the rear, the machine carries the milk-dispensing equipment as
well as a built-in flyswatter and insect repeller. The central portion
houses a hydro- chemical-conversion unit. Briefly, this consists of four
fermentation and storage tanks connected in series by an intricate network
of flexible plumbing. This assembly also contains the central heating plant
complete with automatic temperature controls, pumping station and main
ventilating system. The waste disposal apparatus is located to the rear of
this central section.
Cows are available fully-assembled in an assortment of sizes and
colors. Production output ranges from 2 to 20 tons of milk per year. In
brief, the main external visible features of the cow are: two lookers, two
hookers, four stander-uppers, four hanger-downers, and a swishy-wishy.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...