explain blade servers to me

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cyr0n_k0r

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I have specific questions about blade servers.
Mostly related to the Dell M1000e series.

So I have a chassis which holds X blades. I buy 3 blades and 6 power supplies.
That part I get. What I don't understand are the following.

What are the KVM modules for? What are you seeing on a monitor if you hook up to these KVM modules for the chassis?

Why do blades need network daughter cards? And why are there multiple kinds? Broadcoms, Intels, etc. Why are there spots for 2 separate network daughter cards for the blades? What purpose do these serve?

Why are there multiple slots on the back of the chassis for multiple kinds of network blades? If I have a Dell powerconnect blade in the back, does that provide a virtual network to all the blades?

How do the blades communicate with each other? Is there a network backplane that allows the blades to talk with each other via the 10gb daughter cards? Does this mean the bandwidth between blades is 10gb?
 
Dell should have been able to explain all of this to you prior to the purchase.

KVM modules are so you can control the blades using a keyboard monitor and mouse. If you plug into the KVM module you can use the panel on the front of the chassis to tab through each blade.

I prefer just using the CMC, you can give it an ip address to which you pull open in a browser window. From there you can see your chassis and all of your blades, you can click on them to pop out a window console.

The back of the blade chassis supports 3 network fabrics, each fabric consists of two blade switches (6 total)

If you have 1 network fabric which would be two blade switches in slot A1 and A2 then that's what the built in network cards will connect to, if you get a Fabric B or C you will need an extra mezzanine card in each blade in order to connect to them.

Each fabric has internal ports and external ports, the internal ports are what the blades connect to, external ports are so you can plug into a physical network. Blades communicate to eachother through the network fabrics.
 
What is the purpose of multiple network fabrics?

Do the physical ports on the mezzanine cards correspond to a particular blade?
IE, I have a network mezzanine card with 12 gigabit ports on it, but only 3 blades. How are those 12 gigabit ports split up?

You say blades communicate through the network fabric. So that is like the back plane? So if I have 10Gb network daughter cards in each blades I can have the blades talk to each other via 10GbE?
 
Why did you buy this without understanding how it works? Hell Dell wont even sell me more Equalogics without filling out a damn form each time.
 
schizrade said:
Why did you buy this without understanding how it works? Hell Dell wont even sell me more Equalogics without filling out a damn form each time.
Click to expand...
I didn't buy anything.
I'm doing research and was hoping that people that have played with blade centers before (specifically dell ones) could fill in some gaps for me in plain terms since I don't know about blade center lingo.

stormy1 said:
read this:
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/pedge_m1000e_white_paper.pdf
Click to expand...
come on :rolleyes: I dont have time to read a 40 page whitepaper when I only have 3 or 4 questions specific to how the networking works.
 
cyr0n_k0r said:
I didn't buy anything.
I'm doing research and was hoping that people that have played with blade centers before (specifically dell ones) could fill in some gaps for me in plain terms since I don't know about blade center lingo.

come on :rolleyes: I dont have time to read a 40 page whitepaper when I only have 3 or 4 questions specific to how the networking works.
Click to expand...

If you don't know why you would need them, then you don't need them. The lingo is almost the same as VM lingo, since it is a physical representation of the virtualized environment many people run.

Reading 40 page papers is better than spending many thousands of $$$ on something you obviously know nothing about.
 
schizrade said:
If you don't know why you would need them, then you don't need them. The lingo is almost the same as VM lingo, since it is a physical representation of the virtualized environment many people run.

Reading 40 page papers is better than spending many thousands of $$$ on something you obviously know nothing about.
Click to expand...
Tell ya what, if you can't answer my questions then please stop thread crapping. I'm trying to get some information about specific network related questions on blade servers.
If you can't handle someone asking questions then find another thread.
 
ok, we have a HP bladecentre (that I thoroughly hate), but I'll fill you in on blades.

you have a large (exceptionally heavy) chassis that you stuff with:

Blades
PSU's
Fans
Interconnects / fabrics (basically switches or pass-throughs)

you control the whole deal from the CMC (website that lets you break your newly bought peice of kit), in that you can give things addresses, and "Patch" then into the switches / pass throughs.

Anything you can plug a cable into that might want an address you can assign one from the system, on ours the HP DCHP system for the truely awful IBM switches that it came with isn't working right now so I just throw a console lead on and go that way, you won't need a KVM as you can just console onto things (probably a java interface, but it works and works quite well.)

I'm not a huge fan of our blades but I can see why you'd want them and they do have lots of benefits,

On the mezzanine question, yes, basically the mezz is where the network card goes, that gives you the toys that will be exposed either via a pass-through (basically plug into a switch and off you go, or a built in switch (you patch in the CMC software) and then just uplink (trunk or whatever) to your regular switching. (I really hate our HP blade switches, but after a few hours on them I really like the interface, it just works, its like programming switches in dos. (.. = up a level, cfg/l3/vlan = configure layer3 vlan options)
 
Ok, but no one has answered the main question.

Are the network cards in the back of the blade center a 1:1 map of ports to blades? If you have a 12 port 10/100/1000 switch in the back, and 3 blades with 10GbE daughter cards how do those translate?
 
cyr0n_k0r said:
Ok, but no one has answered the main question.

Are the network cards in the back of the blade center a 1:1 map of ports to blades? If you have a 12 port 10/100/1000 switch in the back, and 3 blades with 10GbE daughter cards how do those translate?
Click to expand...

in the case of our HP yes they are, if you have 2 "onboard" and 2 mezzanine that will consume 4 ports per server on your interconnects.

we use P1 - P18 for servers, and P21-P24 for uplink (P19 & P20 are set aside incase we want to trunk the switches together (we have A and B switches).
 
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