rack-mounted servers Archives -

RAM Upgrade Procedures on Cisco UCS Servers

May 15, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 0

I couldn’t find anything on the internet regarding the correct procedure to add more RAM to a UCS blade. Since it’s not out there, maybe I can help prevent others from running into the same problem I had! Firstly, you need to make sure your catalog is updated to the latest version – make a note of what version is currently running by going to Admin and downloading the latest version (note if you’re running 3.0 you can’t use the 3.1 catalog) from here. You’ll need a Cisco ID. This means that the RAM will be recognised when the discovery is re-run. The correct procedure: Put the blade into maintenance mode (if running VMware for example) and power it off. […]

vSphere Hosts: Scale Up vs. Scale Out

March 10, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 0

Another confusing debate is around the approach you take when choosing your vSphere Hosts hardware configuration. Two approaches there: Scale Up (Vertical Scaling) and Scale Out (Horizontal Scaling). Scale Up is to get small number of large powerful servers and that why it’s called Vertical Scaling; because you scale the configuration up to the max. with small number of servers. Scale out is to get a lot of small less powerful servers to achieve same required configuration and it’s called Horizontal Scaling; because you scale the number of servers horizontally, each with low hardware configuration. The common misconception of these two approaches is that people thinks that Scale-out approach indicates using Blades and Scale-up approach indicates using Rack-mounted servers. A fully populated, powerful blade chassis […]

vSphere Hosts: Blades vs. Rack-mounted Servers

March 9, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 2

One of the political-like eternal debates is the debate around vSphere Hosts Form Factor, which to choose: Blade Servers or Rack-mounted Servers. Both technologies are mature and support high computing power and Hardware Vendors offer both of them now equally. In addition, VMware vSphere supports using both of them and puts no limitation on the form factor of the hosts. They’re dominating now over Tower form factor which began to disappear because of its large foot print and high power usage. Confusing to choose between them, right? Long story short, both options have their own Pros and Cons that should be aligned with your (customer) case and your (customer’s) requirements and constraints. In the following table, a summary of the main differences […]