Build Your Own Blade Server

fw3 writes "Information week is reporting that IBM and Intel are opening up the standards for the eServer BladeCenter. 'The companies will make available the design specifications for IBM's eServer BladeCenter product... hardware vendors can build "BladeCenter compatible" networking switches, blade adapter cards, and appliance and communications blades for enterprise networks.' Not really a new strategy for IBM, ISA of course was open from the start, IBM's technical references for the original PCs contained nearly all of the engineering data needed to build a PC. Looking further back I've been told by a reputable source that RCA was able to fully duplicate the System 360 System/360, mainframe working just a month behind IBM's own schedule by using IBM's published tech reports. (Of course IBM *didn't* share the details of OS/360, leaving RCA with a box but no OS.) See also stories from EETimes, CNN."

Comments

Re:Clone Blade Servers?

[Tassach]

Blades are ideal for any kind of "farm" operation -- web farm, render farm, beowulf cluster, etc. They let you pack a lot more machines into a single rack and consolidate a lot of redundant components. You can get 12+ blades in a 6U chassis, whereas the best you could do with a traditional servers is 6 1U boxen.