Question : Problem: Regarding Blade server soltuion

Hi,

We need to required the blade server solution for our new office, where maximum 250 capacity, and we required up to 400 user exchange servers, we dont want to purchase and use the any SAN/NAS or DAS device as a external storage due to cost effective reason and blade server having the limitation of disk storage and my problem is that how we can configure the exchange server with blade solution when we need required 300 gb data with RAID1.
 I have seen the VMware ESX training video and consultation that there is no benefit of blade server without SAN when you have exchange, sql and Oracle type data.
I am also attach the no. of server XL which I need the solution in Blade server, please help me to finalize the server BOM,  
I need to also required your great help to finalize the blade server vender,  Can you please provide the good links or share you blade server comparison chart, it would also great help me finalize the Server  Vender.

Regards,
Naresh Verma

Answer : Problem: Regarding Blade server soltuion

Naresh, sorry to burst your bubble, but you will not be able to implement what you want proposed in a blade solution without adding a storage device. If the Excel sheet you attached was just for reference and you can live with 2 drives (i think 146GB is max per drive at the moment), you can get by. If space isn't the issue, you dont lose much by not using a SAN...unless you choose to virtualize your environment, which might be something to think about...

When I was faced with this issue about a year ago, I decided to go the blade/san/vmware solution. It was pricey to start off and needed some convincing to management on my part. Today we have 13 fully populated Blade Chassis (202 blade servers) with 64 ESX hosts. I converted 200+ existing servers to VMs and also created an additional 200 new VMs. I have room for another 200+ VMs. The other 140ish servers are used for servers that hog up a lot of resources.

Regardless of physical or virtual servers, blade servers make life so much easier. Not only are we saving more than half of what our expense should be, my trips to the datacenter are now decided on my schedule not the servers...

Here is a quick breakdown of what you will probably save on.
Human Resources
Power & Cooling
Space
Hardware
Additional equipment like a smart power strip, cabinets, KVMs, port density on core switches, etc...

Of course every environment is different and you will need to analyze cost on your own.

We have a mix of IBM, HP, and DELL. I would definitely recommend the DELL over all of them. HP comes a close 2nd, and IBM is dead last. IBMs are the most expensive and in my opinion the worst. Design is seriously flawed. You can only work on 1 blade server at a time through the console. If you want a 2nd hard drive in the IBM you lose the space to add any daughter cards. The only thing nice about the IBM is that you can order the blades with Solid state drives.

Not sure I supplied the answer you were looking for...The best thing you can do at this moment is call the vendors you are interested in and have them present to you. Ask to see the management piece since this is probably the most important piece for you.

Good Luck ^^
Random Solutions  
 
programming4us programming4us