BANGALORE, INDIA: Blade Server is a traditional server architecture where multiple individual servers (blades) plug into a common chassis. Blade servers have a modular design optimized to minimize the use of physical space.

Many traditional server components are removed and consolidated into the Blade Chassis or Enclosure to save space and minimize power consumption amongst other considerations. Services such as power, cooling, networking, various interconnects and management are provided by the blade enclosure.

Need For Blade Servers
Generally, all IT departments face a typical challenge of increasing number of servers when different applications require separate infrastructure and platforms. As a result a lot of space is required to house these servers and that is where the problem of real estate management comes in as it leads to an additional financial burden on the company. This is because when you are expanding physically, you not only need the space but also need the standard requirements of building a fresh server room/datacenter which consists of power, cooling, management, etc.

You need a more powerful technology which offers the option of expansion, and is less power hungry in the server space. Thus, broadly speaking, consolidation around a lesser number of servers is where blade servers score.

Blade Server Benefits
Reduced Space Requirements - Greater density and better use of the server form factor highly reduces the total space requirements of the blade server deployment as compared to tower or rack mounted servers.

Reduced Power Consumption and Improved Power Management ? Power supplied from the blade server chassis highly reduces the total power supply requirement and also reduces the power required per server.

Lower Management Cost - server consolidation and resource centralization simplifies server deployment, management and administration and improves management, redundancy and control.

Simplified Cabling - Blade servers simplify cabling requirements and facilitate highly reduced wiring. Most of the wiring related interconnects are inbuilt into the chassis thereby greatly reducing the need for separate wiring.

Ease of upgrade - as new processor, communications, storage and interconnect technology becomes available, it can be implemented in blades that install into existing equipment, upgrading server operation at a minimum cost and with no disruption of basic server functionality.

Easier Physical Deployment ? since the chassis is responsible for providing the once redundant parts of a server,deployment of a blade server simply involves the placement of the chassis and sliding in the blades. Redundant power modules and consolidated communication bays simplify integration into data centers.

Flexibility- Blade systems also provide significant configuration flexibility, offering a choice among myriad servers, I/O options and other internal components. The chassis can accommodate a mix of x86 (Intel or AMD CPUs) and Unix RISC servers, storage blades, workstations and PC blades, as well as multiple I/O connections per blade.

General Blade Server Architecture
The hardware components of a blade server are the switch blade, chassis (with fans, temperature sensors, etc), and multiple compute blades. The blades reside in a standard compute blade slot,but they may functionally be positioned between the switch blade and the compute blade. The switch card, present on the blade server, is used to connect to the blade server. The switch card distributes packets to blades within the blade server. A network management system software is used to wrap around these components of the blade server. Other functionality such as onboard graphics and VGA output, and USB connectivity etc are provided on the blade but this only leads to lesser advantage taken of the blade server architecture.