Linda posted on June 11, 2008 07:54
It is a great opportunity to attend events like this. I really enjoy learning about new products that are available and thinking about how I can help clients leverage them in their businesses.
One of the really cool server products is Intel's Modular Server. This box occupies 6U of rack space and can house 6 computing modules (servers). Each module has a motherboard, processor and memory and is hot swappable. But the storage space is shared among all of the servers. The device that is currently available can hold up to 14 2.5" hard drives. They can be raided to protect against drive failure and partitioned to any size you need. Partitions can be resized on the fly through the management console.
For those businesses that need high availability, you can even have one of the servers on standby. If one of the others fails, you simply reassign the drive partitions to the standby server and boot it up. In just a few minutes, you are back up and running - and it can all be handled remotely!
Everything in this device is hot swappable - hard drives, power supplies, fans and the included 10 port 1GB managed switch. Of course, each server also has 2 1GB network ports. The base unit comes with two power supplies and you can add 2 more for full redundancy.
Obviously, this isn't for a small office that just needs a basic server. But, if you have 3 servers, or if you think you will be adding servers to get to 3, this is THE most cost effective way to do it. And although HP and IBM have similar products, they are much more expensive than the Intel solution.
We upgraded our servers just about a year ago. Unfortunately, this product was not available when we started upgrading. If it had been, there would be one in my office!
If you want to learn more about this unique offering, check out all the details here.