Marathon Computer IBM BladeCenter Server User Manual


 
Introduction
2 Marathon Technologies Corporation
Reduced Floor Space Usage in the Data Center
Modular design reduces cost through more efficient use of valuable floor
space. The increased density can significantly reduce the space require-
ments in a data center.
Reduced Cost of Power and Cooling
Blades servers integrate resources and share key components. Since
blades in a chassis share common power supplies, power is distributed
more efficiently and less heat is generated for a given amount of pro-
cessing power.
Increased Reliability and Availability
Since the BladeCenter may be configured with redundant hot-swap
power supplies and built-in network switches, it effectively eliminates
several key single points of failure and provides greater system availabil-
ity than conventional rack-mount servers. The BladeCenter also
reduces down-time due to server failure by making replacement of a
failed server easy.
Mission-Critical Blades: The Need For Fault Tolerance
As enterprises move more compute load to blade servers, blades are
becoming increasingly mission-critical. Because downtime has significant
associated costs - lost sales, decreased customer satisfaction, lost produc-
tivity - the need for a simple, affordable way to keep blades running continu-
ously is becoming urgent. Four trends are converging to further increase
the need for continuously available blades:
Improved server density and server consolidation increases the
potential risk to business operations in the event of downtime by
“putting all your eggs in one basket”
Increasingly stringent regulations require data retention and avail-
ability
More threats to security and physical systems
Increasing complexity of enterprise infrastructure, and impact of
system downtime