What is Blade Server in Computer?
Blade servers are compact and energy-efficient computers that are designed for the data centers requiring high computing power. Compared to bulky desktop PCs blade servers pack immense computing muscle into a small footprint by condensing the numerous server modules into a single chassis. This high-density architecture saves space and resources. The chassis centrally provides power, cooling, networking, and other shared services to all the blade servers.
Their space-saving, energy-efficient, and cost-effective design makes the blade servers an ideal solution for organizations needing high-performance computing capabilities. In this article, we are going to discuss what is a blade server, the parts of a blade server, its benefits, types, and many more.
What is a Blade Server?
A blade server is a small computer that is part of a larger group of computers. It fits inside the special box called the blade enclosure or the blade chassis. Many blade servers can fit together tightly into the box saving a lot of space. Each blade server has its processors, memory (to store information), and network connections (to communicate with other devices). The blade servers share resources like power and cooling from the blade enclosure.
Each blade usually runs one main program or application. Instead of having many separate desktop computers taking up room blade servers allow you to pack a lot of computing power into a small thing. This also makes them easier to manage compared to the individual desktop machines.
Blade servers are commonly used in big data centers where a lot of computing muscle is needed in a small space. The blade enclosure supplies what the blades need while the blades do the computing work.
Parts of a Blade Server Technology System
- Chassis: The chassis is the large outer case or enclosure that houses all the blade server components. It provides a compact structure to neatly organize and contain multiple blade servers. The chassis supplies shared resources like power, cooling, and network connectivity to all the blades inside it. This centralized provision of resources helps save space and energy.
- Blades: The blades are the computer server modules that slide into the chassis. Each blade is an ultra-thin, modular circuit board containing processors, memory, storage, and network connections. Blades are designed to be compact and energy-efficient. Multiple blades can be hot-swapped into the chassis, allowing for easy scaling of computing resources.
- Servers: Inside of each blade is an independent server system. These servers have their processors (CPUs) memory (RAM) and storage (disks or solid-state drives) to run the applications and store data. The servers on the blades work together as the unified computing platform managed by the blade chassis.
- Racks: Blade server racks are tall and standard-sized cabinets designed to house the multiple-blade chassis vertically stacked on top of each other. Racks help to maximize space utilization in the data centers by combining numerous blade systems into a compact footprint. They have the integrated cooling, power distribution, and cable management features.
- A backplane: The backplane is the printed circuit board or midplane located at the rear of the blade chassis. It acts as the shared data bus providing the interconnections between all the hot-swappable blade server modules inserted into the front of the chassis. The backplane enables communication and resource sharing into the blades.
Uses of Blade Servers
- File Sharing: Blade servers can act as centralized file servers, allowing users on a network to access, modify, and transfer files and data between different computers or devices. They provide storage and enable collaboration on shared documents.
- Serving Web Pages: Blade servers are commonly used as the web servers to store, process and deliver the website pages and content to internet users when they browse with the web browser. They can also cache (temporarily store) frequently accessed website data onto the users local computer for the faster loading times.
- Secure Web Connections: Blade servers play a key role in establishing secure encrypted connections over the internet using protocols like SSL/TLS. They handle the encryption/decryption of data to protect sensitive information like login credentials or financial details from being intercepted by hackers.
- Converting Code: When users access websites from different devices like phones, tablets or TVs, blade servers can dynamically transcode (convert) the website's code on-the-fly to ensure it renders properly on the specific screen size and browser.
- Streaming Media: For applications like video/audio streaming, blade servers are used to buffer and transmit the media data as a continuous stream to the viewer/listener without interruption for smooth real-time playback.
- Virtual Environments: Virtualization software running on blade servers can simulate entire virtual computers, operating systems or applications within their own isolated environments for purposes like testing, training or increased efficiency.
- Data Storage: The high-density, compact design of blade server chassis allows them to host numerous blade modules, resulting in substantial data storage capabilities to support applications that manage and process large amounts of information.
- Clustered Computing: Multiple blade servers can be clustered together into a unified system, combining their computing resources. This enables load balancing, fail over redundancy, parallel processing power and high availability for business-critical applications.
Benefits of Blade Servers
- Less Heat: Blade servers generate the less heat compared to the traditional servers. Each blade is cooled individually by fans. Since they are densely stacked together, the blade chassis can be stored in a small, dedicated air-conditioned room to maintain the optimal temperature for all the blades.
- Flexibility: Unlike rigid traditional servers, blade servers offer great flexibility. Multiple blade servers can be managed and controlled together as a unified system. An administrator has the ability to dynamically balance and distribute workloads across the individual blade servers as needed.
- Lower Costs: The compact and modular design of the blade servers requires the less cabling compared to the traditional rack servers. With the fewer cables and components to manage IT staff can spend less time dealing with complex infrastructure setup and maintenance reducing the operational costs.
- Energy Efficient: Blade servers are highly energy efficient in two key ways. Firstly, all the blade servers in a chassis can share and pull power from a single, consolidated power source rather than each having separate power supplies. Secondly, their ultra-dense design uses less power per blade.
- Consolidated Storage: While blade servers have local storage, they can also connect to centralized storage pools or arrays facilitated by network-attached storage (NAS), Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI storage area networks (SANs). This allows for storage resources to be consolidated and managed centrally.
- Space-Saving: One of the main advantages of blade servers is their remarkably compact size and small footprint. Their ultra-dense design with minimal components allows them to be packed into very confined spaces, unlike traditional bulky rack servers.
- Dedicated Roles: Since blade servers are optimized for specific dedicated roles or tasks, it becomes possible to allocate entire blade servers to mission-critical enterprise applications for enhanced performance and reliability.
- Scalability: Blade servers provide excellent scalability due to their modular architecture. As computing demands change, enterprises can quickly scale capacity up or down by simply adding or removing blade server modules from the chassis as required.
Types of Blade Servers
Blade servers are categorized by their different features, such as the type of CPUs, the amount of RAM, cache memory, and their connections. Here are the main characteristics that distinguish blade servers based on the equipment they use.
CPU Performance
Blade servers can be equipped with the different CPU such as Intel and AMD or Advanced Micro Devices like Motorola and Sun Microsystems. The CPU do the processing and computing for the overall system. The more powerful it is the more functionality the computer system can provide at the given time.
Storage Media
The blade server can contain the variety of the memory systems including the static RAM (SRAM) and dynamic RAM (DRAM) and the double data rate synchronous dynamic RAM (DDR SDRAM).
- SRAM is one of the new forms of the information storage common in the digital cameras and printers. It stores the data exactly as the same.
- DRAM updates as it works and the common in more complex systems such as the video game consoles.
- DDR SDRAM is most used in the servers and computers with the great deal of the visual content. RAM is used to manage and store the information as well as the complete processing and calculations in the real time.
Connection Options
While blade servers have the modular uniform design that it easy to move between data centers they can have the variety of outer connectors. For example they can be equipped with the output, a token ring, a fiber channel that can be up to six miles long or a field bus network protocol. The bidirectional field bus is network protocol that enables the communication between the input and output devices without connecting the each individual device back to the programmable logic controller.
- Apple FireWire : The FireWire ports are often used to connect to digital cameras external hard disk drives, phones, tablets and devices that require the high data transfer speeds. The FireWire connection can transfer the data at up to the 400 megabytes per second.
- SATA : A SATA connection is the bus style port that connects host bus to adapters to hard drives and solid-state drives or the other larger storage devices.
- SCSI : The SCSI connects computer parts in a SCSI system and creates ports of communication in between them.
- Directed attached storage : The DAS is within a computer itself or directly connected to it and isn't the part of an external storage network system. These is the common example of the internal hard drive of a computer or laptop.
- FC : An FC connection, or FC SAN storage connection, lets network storage devices share information with servers at high speeds with high performance.
- iSCSI : The iSCSI storage connection is based on the IP and includes the storage system that used to link to various network storage locations within the same server system.
Difference Between the Blade Servers, Rack-Mounted Servers and Tower Servers
Blade servers
Blade servers are very thin and compact servers that get stacked together vertically in a chassis. They are commonly used in large data centers that need high computing power. Unlike rack servers, each blade server typically only runs a single dedicated application or task. The blades are modular, so they can easily be swapped in and out of the chassis without disrupting the whole system. Blade servers need fewer cables compared to rack servers.
Rack-mounted servers
Rack servers are stand-alone servers that mount vertically into a rack shelf in a data center. They are suitable for projects requiring moderate computing needs. Each rack server can run multiple applications using its own powerful processors and memory. The number of rack servers can be adjusted based on the required capacity. Without needing a large chassis, rack servers work well for smaller setups with less than 10 servers.
Tower servers
Tower servers are very large integrated desktop computer systems. They have high-performance CPUs and memory, offering powerful computing capabilities. Although larger than rack servers, tower servers can be equally powerful. Multiple tower servers can be stacked together in a small space like a closet. Additional processors and storage space can be added when we needed.
Conclusion
Blade servers are compact and efficient server units that can be easily installed in a chassis with shared resources like power and cooling. They are designed to save space and improve performance in data centers. Blade servers can be customized with different CPUs, RAM, and connections to meet specific needs.
