Blade servers in a home

Question

I'm thinking of buying a blade server enclosure I can use at home and just plug in more servers for more power. Does anyone have any experience with this?

Update: I've had several answers but I realise there is basically NO PHYSICAL CLUSTER SYSTEM DESIGNED FOR HOME USE. I have several uses, some servers high power, some low power, virtualisation, and high performance computing. I guess unless I invent a home system myself I won't find one

Answer 1

You're not too clear in your question but I'm assuming that your space issues with 9 machines are due to the fact that they are desktop tower type machines. If this is the case then simply switching to any rackmounted form factor will most likely be a win for you space wise. But noise wise not so much. Rackmounted gear is made for a data center so low noise is not part of their design goals...proper air flow is. So either way, blades or just rackmounted servers, you aren't going to want to be in the same room with these.

That said unless space is at a real premium I would go with 1U or 1U twin machines for the following reasons. Even with blades you're going to have to buy a rack. Be it a full rack or smaller rack...you'll need a rack of some sort. So that's your floor footprint. If you don't have room for a rack then you don't have room for blades either.

But for argument sake lets say you get a half rack which is 22U's. That can hold 22 1U computers or 44 computers if you go the 1U twin or 2U quad route. Or up to 100 if you go the BoxxTech route below. Now that's most likely more computer density than any home will be able to power or cool. But by avoiding blades you at least have the option to use regular 110v outlets (assuming you're in the US). You can avoid any vendor lock in that comes with blades. And you can use what ever networking equipment you want rather than having to buy over priced network modules for your blade enclosures. Although the self contained nature of the blade enclosures does cut down on wires.

So here's a few non standard vendors worth looking at.

• BoxxTech These are made for rendering but are well suited for any HPC type application as well. They have a nice little turn key option too.
• Silicon Mechanics I would look at the 1U twin or 2U quad systems if space is still a concern.
• Aberdeen Inc these are similar to the Silicon Mechanics but have a 5yr warranty and are targeting HPC applications.
• Supermicro SC809 or SC808

Answer 2

Crazy idea - at least with Dell Blades.

Blades are an expensive proposition and a very unsuitable choice for a home. The Dell M1000E Blade enclosure ideally should be installed in a hot\cold aisle datacenter. The chassis alone has a list price in the range of around $6k IIRC, possibly cost you a lot less if Dell are keen to discount it but that's unlikely for a consumer sale. You will need to add in at least two IO Modules to get basic networking going - minimum of a couple of $k if you choose direct pass throughs. The most basic blades (the M605\M610) will set you back a couple of $k each for the absolute minimum spec and anything up to about $30k for a fully configured half height blade (dual socket).

Then you have to provide power - the chassis is rated for 4.7kw or thereabouts and you're going to need to provide a fairly robust supply to it. Dell recommend either 30A 3-phase or 60A single phase supplies, neither of which are common in domestic environments. You can get away with 4 PSU's and 20A feeds. If you don't plan to fully load the thing you might be able to deal with that but you'd need to be careful about powering the whole thing on\off as it starts up like a freight train with a fairly big surge. You will have to provide good active cooling. And finally when they are fully populated, or even half populated they weigh a significant amount, make sure the flooring where you plan to put them can take it.

In terms of economics Dell blades are never more economical than monolothic servers unless Dell significantly discount them to you. From a power efficiency point of view they may be better when the chassis is full or nearly full but it's a tight call in general.

And they're incredibly noisy.

Cool toys all the same.

Edited to add a couple of other points to remember.

On the minus side

1. Internal expansion is generally limited to a limited number of bespoke IO Mezzanine daughter cards. Dell currently do not support PCIe (or PCI-X) expansion in any blades.
2. Very limited internal storage - 2\4 disks per blade max with limited choices due to power\cooling concerns. Ideally you want to connect them to a SAN\NAS. HP have Blade storage options for their chassis but it's very expensive.
3. Extreme lock in - the chassis is designed to last for a number of generations but it is still limiting factor and you can only ever put servers designed for a specific chassis into that chassis (same applies to the integrated IO Modules).

On the plus side

1. There are some very nice active power management features - some PSU's will automatically be set to standby mode if its more efficient to run a smaller number at a higher level (optimal efficiency is generally at around 85% load)
2. You can specify an overall power envelope and identify server priorities so the chassis will throttle lower priority blades to keep overall power within the desired limits.
3. All M series blades have an integrated iDRAC Enterprise (full remote Out of Band management, including remote console).
4. If you use the integrated IO Modules you can eliminate a hell of a lot of cables - each half height unit can be configured with 10 1G NICs (or 6 NICS +2 FC HBA's\Infiniband\10GigE). Not as nice as HP's Flex10 but pretty good.

Answer 3

I have had a HP C3000 (the 8/16 version, not the C7000, the 16/32 server version, that would be stupid) in my house for a while. Whilst far from silent or cool I've had no real problems with them - other than a confused wife and a genuinely scared cleanering lady :)

Edit - oh and both a HP EVA and a NetApp too!

Answer 4

Have a look at the Intel products as well.

Intel Modular

IBM Enclosure

IBM Blade System S has an enclosure that is very quite. It will not be inexpensive. However, unlike Dell and HP, the Blades and otehr parts have not changed in many years so a new blade fits an old chassis and vice versa,

Answer 5

For a Dell m1000e, you're talking around 6000 for the enclosure and 2000 per blade...It's all ball-park-y, because they spend a lot of time doing "Lets make a deal" and the per blade cost depends dramatically on how capable a blade you buy.

I've run a number of different blade servers, but never one in my house. You're going to need to make sure your cooling solution is up to snuff.

In my experience, the problem with the blade server is that the whole mess becomes obsolete at about the same rate as a regular server...So it's great if you need something that can scale dramatically in the next 6 months, but if you need something in the long term, you're probably better off just buying individual servers.

Answer 6

Do you really need this to be at home? I'd look around for a DC and rent some servers there. Benefits:

• no need to worry about the cooling
• no need to worry about the power supplies
• they won't depreciate as quickly
• you can always get rid of them when you don't need them
• you can upgrade them to better servers if you still need the processing power
• expand way beyond what a regular chasis offers if you need
• ah yeah... doesn't take up any space at all at home

Downside is that DC may be not in a close proximity to you, but then again, how often do you stroke the server? If you're processing large amounts of data you may need to transfer it there somewhere. Which leads to another question, can you not get that data directly uploaded to the servers in DC. Alternatively, pick a DC near you and you can go there and do whatever you need to upload the data.

I've got few servers (in a DC) for a personal use, cost me around $70. 2 CPU 4GB RAM 400GB HDD. They're rather old (3 yrs old) but I'm still ok with them. Will upgrade (at $0 cost, just a plan change) when I need to. Let's say you need 10 of those for your application, that'll make it $700/month, or $7k/yr (when getting 10 you most def will get a discount). This is just a starting price for the blade chasis, not including blades and other bells and whistles.

From economical POV it is not efficient to buy any of the computing equipment, unless you're a super large enterprise.

Answer 7

HP makes a free standing tower enclosure that may be appropriate if you don't have a rack installed. You can also install power supplies that can be fed from a regular 15A outlet. Many IT departments experience unforseen capacity problems with electrical power in server rooms, so you'l have to be especially cautious if you install one in your home (remember you'll want to deliver UPS-protected power, or at the very least surge protection). The street price on the enclosure alone will probably run you over $4K.

Answer 8

(Sorry, not enough rep to comment yet.)

For what it's worth, I work for a shop with a pile of blades (~70) and a number of servers with other form factors. Our blade enclosures are server-class, but they definitely are loud, require a lot of power, and still require one Ethernet cable per blade.

I would be surprised if 9 tower-ey machines aren't quieter. If you're only using power and ethernet, getting blades probably won't even reduce your cabling that much, and if your machines do have significantly more than power and ethernet, why? :-)

(I read your other question.)