How to Choose a Server Cabinet

There are many things to consider when buying a server cabinet, including size, weight, heat management and delivery. Many of these things can be kept secret by manufacturers, in order to keep prices high. However, if you know what you need from your server rack before you buy, you can save both time and money.

The height of most server cabinets is measured in 'u' sizes. This is a standard measurement for rackmount equipment, where one 'u' is equal to 1.75 inches, or 44.45mm. Usually, 1u is equal to a 24-port patch panel or switch. The height measurement indicates how many units the cabinet can accommodate, and the most popular height for a server cabinet is 42u. They can range from 17u to 49u, although other sizes can be made on special order.

When considering the height of your server cabinet, you should first total up the height of all the equipment you intend to put into it. If you want to put in equipment which isn't rack-mountable, you should include the size of this, as well as the shelving it will sit on.

Once you've measured the size of your equipment, it's a good idea to factor in some space for expansion. This will help you avoid spending more money on replacing your server cabinet in the future.

You should also consider the space in which you intend to keep your cabinet, as, while internal measurements are standard, external measurements can differ between manufacturers. Your choice of adjustable feet, castors or plinth will need to be taken into account.

The width of your server rack will either be 600mm or 800mm, depending on how much cable management you require. This should also be taken into account when positioning your equipment.

The weight of your equipment also needs to be calculated, especially if regular additions will be made. Different cabinets have different load ratings, and it can be easy for the amount of weight to creep up if it goes unchecked.

Server cabinet depth has changed recently, as server manufacturers have been making cabinets which are shorter in height, while a lot deeper. 800mm was once considered as large, however 1000mm is a common size and 12000mm is also available. When thinking about the overall depth of your cabinet, you will also need to consider the width of the doors, which will need to open in order to access the rack.

As your equipment can generate a lot of heat, ventilation is required to ensure everything functions correctly. Heat can also be managed by fitting mesh doors which allow greater airflow through the cabinet.

Finally, when considering delivery, make sure you have enough space to manoeuvre your product into its desired space. The location, as well as the route through the building to get to it, will need to be taken into account, along with the size and weight of the product.

By following this guide, you will be able to choose a server cabinet that suits both your equipment and your home perfectly.

About Microbite:
For additional products, including Blade servers and Thomson routers, visit Microbite.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Darren_Chimes/1064146



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6684017

Servers - A Tale of Two Technologies

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

Dickens was describing London and Paris during the French Revolution. But in today's world, it is an apt description of the IT industry during the virtual revolution.

For the worst of times, we need look no further than the server industry, which reported another disastrous quarter earlier this week. According to IDC, worldwide shipments dropped some 26.5 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2009, with all of the major vendors showing double-digit revenue drops. Overall, the industry shipped only 1.49 million units, the largest decline in five years, with revenues down nearly a quarter to $9.9 billion.

The source of all this woe is the one-two punch of the recession and virtualization, which dampens the demand for new hardware through higher utilization of existing machines. While this may be good for capital budgets, as well as the environment, it's proving to be a real burden for the server industry, which had long counted on a steady refresh rate to keep its coffers full. The decline was most keenly felt in x86 devices.

IDC is also reporting that the picture seems to be the same for the second quarter so far, although they are predicting a tepid rebound by the fourth.

To their credit, many of the top server vendors are not trying to push back the tide but are actively embracing virtualization and other advanced technologies designed to produce more efficient hardware platforms. IBM, for instance, is gearing up for a new server line that takes advantage of Intel's forthcoming Nehalem-EX architecture that features up to 64 cores across eight processors. Although the system is likely to be expensive, it could do the job of multiple blade servers through its ability to handle up to 128 individual threads. The chip itself also provides 16 memory slots per socket and four QuickPath interconnect links for processing large amounts of data in tandem.

Now for the best of times. All of this virtual and multicore activity is clearly a boon to the networking side of the house, particularly wide-band solutions like 10 GbE. Dell'Oro Group reports that the 10 GbE market rebounded in the first quarter, following a decline in the fourth quarter of 2008. The company did not release any numbers from its Network Adapters Quarterly Report, although it did say that Intel is once again the new leader in adapter card revenue and port shipments, while Broadcom retained the spot as leader in silicon controllers.

This all makes perfect sense, of course, because as more and more data starts to run through fewer and fewer hardware devices, the focus of data center performance shifts from raw processing power to network agility and speed. Going forward, as cloud technologies allow enterprises to shift resources on a global scale, the question will no longer be "Do I have enough power to handle all this data?", but rather "How can I get this data quickly to my various end-points?"

And in this vein, there doesn't seem to be anyone interested in slowing things down. Mellanox, for example, just unveiled a 6-port, multiple-protocol 10 GbE physical layer that lays the groundwork for a new generation of high-density, low-power switches and pass-through devices. The PhyX supports all 10 Gigabit Ethernet physical layer functions and can be field-upgraded to FCoE with 2, 4, and 8 Gbps Fibre Channel gateway service without hardware modifications.

With such precipitous changes in data center hardware buying patterns, many wonder if things will ever get back to normal. While sales and revenue figures have fluctuated over the years, the hard news this time is that these changes look permanent. Once the recession is over, server sales should pick up, but they will be nowhere near previous numbers because those low utilization rates are gone forever.

The new normal will be relatively low server activity and increasingly fast networks as enterprises position themselves for the cloudy/virtual decade to come.

Read Art's article, "The Three Factors Shaping the Future of the Data Center" - http://bit.ly/LQD6h

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Arthur_Cole/213479



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2410401

Which Sun Servers Are Available in Refurbished Condition?

In 2009 the Oracle Corporation officially announced that it would be acquiring Sun Microsystems. Oracle hoped that it could capitalize on the company's successful line of units in order to offer the only integrated system on the market, one which combined industry leading software and critical computing systems. Following the acquisition, Oracle restructured and determined which Sun servers would continue to be developed and manufactured and which product lines to discontinue. Many servers, like the Sun SPARC systems, the Sun Blade systems, and the Sun x86 systems would continue to be produced. However, other Sun servers like the Sun Fire were discontinued.

Businesses that wish to add Sun Fire servers to their information technology (IT) environment must purchase these machines as previously owned, but even those brands that are still being produced can be purchased as pre-owned. The used server price for brands like Sun SPARC, Sun Blade, and Sun x86 is less than half the price of a new machine. This makes it advantageous for businesses to purchase new machines, as the cost savings can be invested back into the machine to improve its performance. In addition to the low used server price, another thing that makes used servers a good investment is the fact that they can be configured to the buyer's needs. Many vendors offer to pre-install the necessary software after the device is professionally cleaned. This makes it easier to integrate a newly purchased machine into the company's IT environment.

Once a company has determined that it wants to purchased used servers, it must determine which product best fits organizational needs. Here are a few Sun servers that can be purchased as previously owned:

Sun Blade

These computer systems were introduced in 2006 to serve as Sun's blade server product. The first product in this line was the Sun Blade 8000 Chassis, which was capable of holding up to 10 blades. The next year, Sun released the Sun Blade 6000 Chassis, which enabled owners to integrate both SunSPARC and Sun x64 architecture blades.

SPARC Enterprise

Introduced in 2007, this line of Sun servers is a range of UNIX computers that are based on the SPARC9 architecture. What sets these units apart from other models is that they can be electronically partitioned by using dynamic reconfiguration and domains. Previously owned SPARC enterprise devices have a low used server price, which makes it easy for companies with minimal resources to acquire partitioned models.

Sun Fire

These models were originally introduced in 2001 and they were produced until 2003 with the UltraSPARC III processor. These Sun servers were later released with Intel Xeon, AMD Opteron, or UltraSPARC IV dual-core processors, but in 2012 the line was officially discontinued. In essence, the used server price for a Sun Fire device is the only price.

While a previously purchased unit is inexpensive and reliable with the right warranty, customers will find that a refurbished model is more reliable. A refurbished Sun Blade, SPARC Enterprise server, or Sun Fire server that has been properly evaluated, and repaired is better protected from future problems thanks to the presence of a warranty.

Organizations that offer Sun servers in a refurbished condition will still offer these devices at a lower used server price.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/James_T._Rothery/543525



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7367959

Servers - Racks, Blades and Towers

Unlike tower servers, offices that use rack servers which traditionally come in 1U, 2U, 3U, 4U or 6U are installed in racks. The numbers that give names to the rack mounted servers precisely indicate the number of Us they occupy in the racks. The 1U server occupy a single 1U bay, the 2U occupy two and the 4U occupy four, while a rack of standard size has up to 42U:

The servers in 1U format are preferred by companies for use in hosting and data, because they are very compact (only 4.4 cm high), which lets you install a large number of servers per rack. The main limitations of this format is the limitations with regard to ventilation (due to the small inner space), impeding the use of processors with high energy consumption and the need to use coolers and special fans, which all run at an extra cost. Besides the basic components, spare space in general to install 2 or 4 hard drives of 3.5 "(according to the provision of other components) and a single expansion card, installed horizontally, with the help of a Riser.

Then there are the 2U servers. They use "normal" power sources and coolers and therefore end up being a little cheaper. The bigger internal space makes the format more suitable for 2U servers with two or more processors, or processors that use high consumption. The height is not enough to install expansion cards upright, as in tower servers, but you can use a Riser (as in the case of 1U), or use half-height cards (the lower plates, which have half the height of normal plates).

Finally, we have the biggest servers, which use 3U or 4U. There are 6U servers, but they are rare: this format is typically used by the disk arrays and chassis for blade servers (see the topic below). Using a 3U server or larger completely eliminates the problems with space, allowing the expansion cards to be fit in vertically and a large number of removable hard drives installed in bays, but causes the server to occupy more space in the rack, which increases the cost to the host of the datacenter, where you would pay an extra fee per pen used.

Another format that is becoming increasingly popular are the blade servers (blade comes from the word "blade", indicating the small format), an ingenious idea to further increase the density of servers and allow the sharing of common components in the datacenter, as power supplies and optical disks.

The idea is that instead of having 10 1U servers, with 10 sources (or 20, if sources were used redundant), 20 network cables (each server typically uses two cables, one for the network and another for management or redundancy), as well as power cables, cables used by KVM and so on, you can use a single Chassis, with an equivalent number of blade servers.

Each blade is a complete server with its independent processor, memory, network card and disks. Its small size, the blade servers typically use low-power processors and hard drives of 2.5". At the beginning, it was the common use of processors from Transmeta and VIA, but they ended up being almost completely replaced by Intel & AMD multiple cores processors which are much faster, but still relatively economics. In the case of hard drives, the disks of 2.5 "are favorites for providing lower access times (but lose with respect to transfer rate), in addition to electric consumption.

Thought not all blade system are created equally. Therefore if you are planning to jump into the blade campaign you should find the best fit blade system for your case. Check out the below comparisons which will help you compare between them:

HP Blade system vs IBM Blade System

HP Blade System vs Dell Blade System

by Julie Cole, a member of ITComparison.com Hardware team & write for the Virtualization Team Blog

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Julie_Cole/105453



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1840785

What Are The Blade Servers?

Blade servers are nothing new in the world of computers. All teams were (requires the amount of disk space) on the cards since 1970 as part of efforts to reduce the balance capable IT companies use solutions.Today blade servers for the same reasons that have been developed in the 70s: a mess save space in data centers.

The solution lies in a case that the server is usually called blade 8-16 houses. "The BladeCenter chassis on a rack in the datacenter and provides the infrastructure for the" Blade "servers, such as shelf space, power, switching and network connectivity (no cable for each server .) Most of the center blade frame 60-10 HU in size, which means that theoretically you can put 64 or more servers in a rack means. It's a huge savings for a company with little space .

What is the downside? For most types of solutions, the "too good to be true:" There are always problems and "Blade" server is no exception. Many servers also means more energy and heat in a confined space. If you consider installing a "blade" servers, you should consider the implications of energy and heat. A new Liebert can provide enough space. Some data centers may be up to twice its normal place on the grid, it is important to consider the power and cooling units.

According to Gartner, blade servers are the server market segment, will be limited in spite of this growth. Shipping is $ 850 000 in 2006 to 2,300,000 in 2011 to grow, representing nearly 22% of shipments server. Blade servers will not disappear into account, so be sure to take in the future design of your data center.

If you look at the leaves of your data center is very important to choose the solution of the Journal for your environment.