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New PowerEdge M-Series Blade Servers From Dell

21 January , 07:00 AM

After talking to several folks here at Dell, I can say that we have a lot of folks who are excited to bring the PowerEdge M-Series modular blade servers to market, along with a new 10U enclosure. Building on the PowerEdge 1955 blade system that InfoWorld recently named Best Blade Server System of the Year, Dell focused much attention on energy efficiency, I/O flexibility and usability in designing the new M-Series system.

The 10U PowerEdge M1000e enclosure supports up to 16 PowerEdge M600 or M605 blade servers that offer two quad-core Intel  Xeon or AMD Opteron processors per blade.  We improved power and cooling by starting with our Energy Smart technologies, using high efficient fans and power supplies, and through Dynamic Power Management—which allows customers to use software to dynamically load balance across power supplies, or to even turn off power supplies when they're not needed. Flexibility is also key, and the M-Series has been designed to support snap-in capability all the way down to the switch interconnects. The PowerEdge M1000e also offers all kinds of connectivity options—including the upgradable Dell PowerConnect M6220 Layer 3 switch, three different Cisco switch options, two 4Gb

 

 

 

Fibre Chanel switch options from Brocade, Fibre Channel host bus adapters from QLogic and Emulex, and more. 

These blade servers are ideal for medium and large size customers who are faced with space constraints, power and cooling challenges, and the need to scale their environment quickly wihout sacrificing ease of deployment.

In this vlog, I talked to Chad Fenner from the PowerEdge server team. He covers quite a bit here... providing insight into the development process, usability enhancements, more details on energy efficiency, ease of use, connectivity and flexibility and more.

Folks on the development team told me that lots of customer feedback they gathered during the 2-year development cycle helped shape this product. Like I mention in the video, there's many different topics to cover with a product like this.

We look forward to your comments—please let us know what areas you want to discuss in more detail and we'll go from there.

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charles
11 Aug 2008 03:22 PM

Do the 1955 blades work in the 1855 chasis? I am new to blade servers and admining my first blade server. I thought I had a 1955 when it really was an 1855 with 1955 blades. I was wondering if 1855 is the chasis and 1955 is the blade or is there an 1955 chasis as well.

 

Thanks in advance,

Charles
 
Tom Loisel
01 Jul 2008 09:40 AM

I'm curious about the heat output of the m1000e series... we're considering upgrading and moving our racks to another room... we'd need to know what the BTU output of anywhere from 1 to 16 blades would be so we can make the necessary preparations with the A/C folks... Any clues?
 
Dennis Smith, Enterprise Liaison-Dell Community Forum
04 Jun 2008 09:09 AM

By using the Datacenter Capacity Planner, I am showing that the M1000e Enclosure with 16 M600 Blades Configured with 2 Xeon X5450 procs, 4gb memory, 2 hard drives, and redundant power supplies draws a total of 0.9 amps per blade and a total of 17.7 amps per enclosure.  If you choose the M605 blade with 2 Opteron 2218HE procs, 4gb memory, 2 hard drives, and redundant power supplies you are looking at 0.72 amps per blade and a total of 14.58 amps for the enclosure.  You can find the Datacenter Planner at the link here:

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/pedge/topics/en/config_calculator?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz

 
 
Andy N
03 Jun 2008 04:37 PM

Anyone know any more information on the power requirements of these blades?  We currently use and implement alot of PE 1950's and those draw about 2.2-2.3 Amps per server (dual proc, HD, power supplies, 4GB ram) and are located in a datacenter that delivers/charges power by the amp.  This model completely shot the PE 1955 out of our radar because there was no way that we would pay twice as much for 30A of 208v power and only be able to support 10 servers (same 30A circuit could handle up to 11 servers on 110v power!).  The M1000e seems to have addressed some of these concerns w/ flexible options but it comes down to how much will it cost to monsters.
 
Russ Svendsen
23 Apr 2008 10:41 AM

My complaint is that dell advertised this as support for future generations.

And now there are no future generations. I understand technology moves on However dell could provide more here than an empty promise.
 
Aaron Hanson, Sr. Manager—PowerEdge Server Team
04 Feb 2008 01:20 PM
AHarden, Thanks for inquiring about this particular point. Let me provide some brief perspective: The PE1855/1955 was introduced in October 2004, closer to roughly 3.5 years in development.  Indeed there will be no further revs of the PE1955. We made the change over to our new M-Series blades to take advantage of the latest advancements in available technology. We will be offering the PE1955 blade servers for the next two quarters to allow customers who have invested in the enclosure to take full advantage of their investment.We believe this lifecycle for the PowerEdge 1855/1955 is very much in line with what you'll see from other blade server providers. 
 
Aaron Hanson, Sr. Manager—PowerEdge Server Team
04 Feb 2008 01:18 PM
Hi Jim, yes we will be supporting Infiniband devices on the PowerEdge M-Series in the very near future.  PowerEdge blades have long been considered an ideal platform for HPCC, in fact 4 of the top 50 super computers are run using our previous generation 1955 blades (www.top500.org)
 
Weezie
01 Feb 2008 01:31 PM

Wait...so first you censor my comment about using Fujitsu designs, and now it turns out this new chassis is not compatible with the 1955 architecture? This is way too funny.
 
aharden
30 Jan 2008 02:03 PM

Let's be clear here.  From what I've read and heard, the PE1855/PE1955 infrastructure only had servers actively developed for it for about 2.5 years (being generous here).  There are no new revs of the PE1955 planned, right?  Supporting a blade infrastructure product with new servers for such a short period of time penalizes those who chose to invest in that product, and is not typical of Dell's competitors in this space. 
 
Jim
30 Jan 2008 12:26 PM

Will Dell be supporting Infiniband and iWarp devices in this chassis in the near future? I am interested in this platform from an HPCC persepctive.

 

--Jim 
 
Craig
29 Jan 2008 10:14 AM

What's going to happen to customers that already have the 1955 Blade and want to add a new blade, or need to get an new enclosure?  Is there going to be an adapter kit?

-Craig
 
aaron_hanson
30 Jan 2008 09:05 AM

Craig:

Thanks for the comment. The PowerEdge M-Series is a brand new blade solution and will not house our previous generation PE1955 blade servers, no adapter kit is available.  However, we will continue to offer 1955 blade servers for many months to allow customers to fully populate and take advantage of their PE1955 blade enclosure investment.  We also offer migration tools via Symantec|Altiris to migrate applications and workloads from existing 1955 blades to M-Series Blades.