The Dell Poweredge 1855 Blade Center, comes with either two single core or Dual core 64 bit Intel Xeon processors. 800MHz front side bus, DDR-2 memory, LSI Logic PERC4/im Raid, Hot plugable SCSI 320 drives.
Chasis and Form factor: 7U Chasis holds upto 10 1855 Blades. (60 Blades in a 42U Rack).
The KVM module comes in either Avocent Analog or the Avocent Digital. The Avocent digital KVM is highly recommend and supports virtual media, which allows you to boot a Blade Server from a remote CD or Floppy drive.
For Network connectivity, the PowerConnect 5316M Ethernet Switch Module is the better choice if your goal is to conserve network ports.
The Chasis can be accessed by a web browser, this allows power on and off control of each Blade unit.
The Dell Blade Management software is called IT Assistant. This software provides sever central management and deployment features, like upgrading firmware, or even running custom scripts for nightly reboots.
Deploying an Operating System to the Blades: Dell's documentation recommends the Altiris Deployment Solution for automating OS installations.
Imaging the Dell Blade Servers:
1. If you choose to use a DOS type boot disk to run your imaging software, you should know that for the Dell Blades you will have to modify the HIMEM.SYS line in your CONFIG.SYS file.
And add /MACHINE:17 to the end of the line.
himem.sys /machine:17
2. To get a clean working image, You must install the OS from the original media, and not the Dell Server Assist CD. Which creates a Diagnostic partition that cannot be imaged.
How does the performance compare, in fully loaded conditions, with the Blade Center configured with 64 bit 2003 Server and the 64 bit version of Citrix Presentation Server 4.0. It is suppose to get upto 3 times the concurrent sessions.
We are about to find out, come back in a couple of weeks and I will post the findings.
In summary: if you have already purchased the Blade Center or have a demo unit, I hope the above tips can help you save some time in setting up and installing an operating system.
References
Dell Multi-Core Enterprise Technology
Blade Server Benefits
