|
|
Dell
Blades |
SUN Blades |
|
Chassis flexibility |
PowerEdge 1955
PowerEdge M1000e |
SUN Blade 6000
SUN Blade 8000 |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
Dell Blades vs
SUN Blades |
Dell had offered
two Chassis PowerEdge 1955 & PowerEdge M1000e. Their latest is M1000e
which is their only available offering at the moment. In the other hand, SUN offer two different Chassis SUN Blade
6000 & SUN Blade 8000. Both SUN & Dell have no compatibilities
across their chassis. You can't use modules & Blades across SUN 6000 &
SUN 8000, as well you can't use Blades & Modules from Dell older chassis
into their M1000e chassis. |
|
Blade server flexibility |
Intel Xeon, AMD Opteron. |
Intel
Xeon, AMD Opteron, SPARC |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both Dell & SUN are
offering AMD & Intel Blades. In the Unix side SUN Offer SPARC Blades,
where Dell has no offering equivalent offering. |
|
Blades/Chassis
Full Height
Blades/Chassis
Fully Redundant
Blades/Chassis
Blades w/ hotswap
HDD per chassis
Fully Redundant
Blades w/ hotswap HDD |
16
8
0
16
0 |
10
10
0
10
0 |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
SUN Blades vs
Dell Blades |
It seems SUN has
only succeeded in fitting 10 Blades in 10 U chassis which makes it
lower Density than Dell Chassis if you use a half height blades. We
call
SUN & Dell Full Height Blades semi-redundant blades as they are not fully redundant as explained under
the redundancy comparison.
- SUN Density
is very low for a blade solution as they are not doing any better than
1U servers. Fitting 10 Blades in 10 U enclosure that is 1U per Blade
which could be easily matched with rack mounted servers. |
|
Redundancy |
- Single power connections to each blade
- Single I/O paths for Certain I/O slots
on most of their blades
|
- Single power connections to each blade
- Single I/O paths for Certain I/O slots
on most of their blades |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both Dell & SUN seems
to miss the same redundancy points in their design. |
|
Hot Swap
HDD
Solid
State Drives (SSD) |
No need for expansion
unit which save space
Not
Available |
No need for expansion
unit which save space
Not Available |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both SUN & Dell does
not require an expansion to fit hotswap HDDs, further more both does not
offer solid stat drives yet. |
|
Illuminated path to blade components |
Dell offer diagnostics LEDs beside some components, but will not led without
power. |
Sun does not offer any equivalent. |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Better and faster
serviceability in the Dell Blades with the ability to pinpoint the
problem using diagnostics LEDs, which is not offered at all by SUN.
Though it would be nice if Dell had a backup battery in its
blade to get the LEDs to work when taken out for maintenance. |
|
Event identification |
Nothing Equivalent. |
Nothing Equivalent |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Neither Dell nor SUN
offer Event identification system which would provide a better non over-lapping error
reporting through their Management solution which help in resolving cascaded
problems faster. |
|
Connectivity |
Dell
Offer internal switches in addition to their passthru offering for
most kind of connectivity available in the market today (Ethernet,
Fiber Channel, 10GB Ethernet , and InfiniBand). As well they offer it
from multiple vendors for some connectivity type. |
Sun only offer Pass-thru modules for all connectivity types, no internal
switches at all. |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
SUN fail to
integrate any switches into their offering, which make their blades
offering not any better than 1U servers offering. As they are already
packaging max of 10 blades in 10U Chassis, so no space saving. Further more,
they force you to use further space for external switches. In addition,
you don't get rid of all the nasty network & Fiber cables between the
chassis & the switches.
In the other
hand, Dell Blades can fit up to 16 Blades in 10 U Chassis which save you on
space. Further more they allow you to fit some of your required switches in
the chassis saving you further on space & cabling. It even look a lot
smoother when getting rid of the 100's of cables connecting the servers
to the switches in the case of 1Us server & SUN Blades.
Important note:
That Dell offering for some connectivity switches are only unmanaged (e.g:
Inifiniband), though that still a lot better than not offering it at
all. Further more, Dell still stuck with pass-thrus for some type of
connectivity. |
|
Blade deployment and redeployment |
No Equivelant |
No Equivelant |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
SUN Blades vs
Dell Blades |
Virtual Connect &
Open Fabric Manager from HP & IBM provide automatic failover for failing blade to another blade
using boot from SAN functionality. In addition, it removes all the work
involved in replacing a failing blade.
SUN & Dell Does not
offer anything equivalent to HP Virtual Connect & IBM BOFM & will require the
admin to reconfigure the SAN Zoning & the network VLANs when
replacing any blade wasting precious time & increase the downtime
required to replace a blade. |
|
Built-in
Central
Management Module |
Almost |
N/A |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
Dell Blades vs
SUN Blades |
Dell user Chassis Management Controller (CMC) which seems to mainly offer
monitoring & log readings is very similar to the management module
offered by HP, not much of a centralized management. Dell
still more dependant on directly managing a blade by blade connecting
directly to the iDRAC chip placed into each blade,
SUN Blades does not offer any equivalent to Dell Management Module. They
only offer direct server management, which in turn means you still have
to manage your blades as a normal rack server, not as a blade
infrastructure. |
|
Efficient utilization of available power
resources |
Dell
Power Manager |
N/A |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
Dell Blades vs
SUN Blades |
Dell Power Manager
can monitor power per blade & Chassis, but not per modules.
Dell Power Manager
does not seems to be integration ready with other monitoring solutions.
Dell only offer
a hard threshold which can cause operations problems.
SUN has no equivalent
offering at the moment.
|
|
Unpacking Offering |
Delivered fully assembled (by Default) |
Assembled at customer site (Default)
Fully Installed (Charge apply) |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Dell had made a
great deal of them delivering their blades fully assembled & ready to
power on and not having to assemble it at customers site. Although this
definitely can save customers time, it can't be the main selling point
for a blade offering. As SUN has a similar offering, but they
explicitly charge for it where dell had implicitly accounted for it in
each chassis delivered. |
|
Investment Protection |
Each Chassis is a fully different game. |
Each Chassis is a fully different game. |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both SUN & Dell
Chassis have no interopobility with their earlier offering. When
upgrading between Dell or SUN chassis you would have to get rid of your
old blades & modules & replace them with new compatible ones,
which can be a huge waste of investment. In addition, both vendors have
no word on if that is going to hold for their next offering. |