DL380 G6!!!!!

[GrumbleDook]

We have done previously but I'm sure someone will give andy a poke for an answer (hint!)

[Butuz]

Sun Microsystems - UK - Promotions - FY09 2H Matching Grant Programme

 

An example of this commitment is our Matching Grant programme currently on offer to Higher Education institutions. Can schools use it or not then?

 

You have to apply to SUN for it - or get a reseller like Cutter to apply for it on your behalf. It's judged by SUN on a case by case basis. But yes even though it does say its HE - schools on this very forum have bought lots of kit on matching grant. I think Ric_ is one of them.

 

Butuz

[Soulfish]

Sun Microsystems - UK - Promotions - FY09 2H Matching Grant Programme

 

An example of this commitment is our Matching Grant programme currently on offer to Higher Education institutions. Can schools use it or not then?

 

Well Sun have approved our matching grant request through Cutter, and I've been talking with one of the Managers at Sun (sorting out some problems we were having with people quoting us when they weren't sun educational partners like cutter and so couldn't get the pricing they'd originally promised) at he didn't seem to have a problem with us going for matching grant.

 

From talking to Andy at The Cutter Project it also seems that they've done this for a few schools now

[DMcCoy]

Well Sun have approved our matching grant request through Cutter, and I've been talking with one of the Managers at Sun (sorting out some problems we were having with people quoting us when they weren't sun educational partners like cutter and so couldn't get the pricing they'd originally promised) at he didn't seem to have a problem with us going for matching grant.

 

From talking to Andy at The Cutter Project it also seems that they've done this for a few schools now

 

 

"All equipment on the order must be part of a classroom, a student or research lab configuration, for student, faculty, or research desktops"

 

"What kind of lab is this, how will it be used, and who will be using it? (Please give details as this motivation will be the basis for a possible approval)"

 

 

Is the "for student ... desktops" bit the relevant part?

[torledo]

Oo there's new sun servers next week??? Glad you told me that!

 

Butuz

 

i think all of the big four are releasing new x86 servers to coincide with the release of the new(?) xeon

5500 series processors. I know ibm have released a new blade based on the new processors for the bladecenter and the new x3550 M2 server which now crams in 6 disks into a 1U chasis and can accomodate upto 4 ethernet ports [although i think 4 ethernet ports without using a PCI slot is an optional extra rather than standard].

 

i think they're all looking to catchup with sun in the regard of having 4 integrated gige ports and cramming more disks into the pizza box.

 

i personally have got a bit of a thing for blades atm, but the new 1U servers that are being released are defintely worth looking into.

[Soulfish]

"All equipment on the order must be part of a classroom, a student or research lab configuration, for student, faculty, or research desktops"

 

"What kind of lab is this, how will it be used, and who will be using it? (Please give details as this motivation will be the basis for a possible approval)"

 

 

Is the "for student ... desktops" bit the relevant part?

 

I've no idea what actually gets sent to Sun - Andy at Cutter did it all for us. He sent us the quote based on us getting Matching Grant approval, and we sent the PO to purchase it. Once we were sure we were ordering he went away and got the matching grant approval for us (takes a few days for Sun to approve it) while our finance people got the PO faxed over

[DMcCoy]

i think all of the big four are releasing new x86 servers to coincide with the release of the new(?) xeon

5500 series processors. I know ibm have released a new blade based on the new processors for the bladecenter and the new x3550 M2 server which now crams in 6 disks into a 1U chasis and can accomodate upto 4 ethernet ports [although i think 4 ethernet ports without using a PCI slot is an optional extra rather than standard].

 

i think they're all looking to catchup with sun in the regard of having 4 integrated gige ports and cramming more disks into the pizza box.

 

i personally have got a bit of a thing for blades atm, but the new 1U servers that are being released are defintely worth looking into.

 

4 years down the road, I doubt I'd ever go for blades again, I think 1-2U servers will probably be used to replace them.

[torledo]

4 years down the road, I doubt I'd ever go for blades again, I think 1-2U servers will probably be used to replace them.

 

can i ask why you'd not go down the blade route given the choice ?

 

Is it your experience with a particular vendors blade offering or the general concept. I think one of the problems with blades has been that apart from ibm, none of the vendors appear to have offered investment protection [forward compatibility] from the get go with the blade chassis. Main stumbling block for us is initial cost, not to mention the variety of options which add to the cost.

 

the new 1U servers seem to represent the best value, but the cost of implementing fibre channel in such servers doesn't appear to be getting any cheaper.

[Butuz]

Hmm was warned off blades years ago by the LEA after they upgraded their datacentre and ended up being forced to spend a fortune on upgrading their electricity supply as the blades were so power hungry. They seem to be very power hungry, very complicated, and very expensive for the number of cores they provide, especially compared ot modern sun servers that give 8 cores in 1u, 24 cores in 2u and 36 cores in 4u in single servers?

 

Can I turn it around on you Toledo and ask - what are the advantages of blades in schools?

 

Butuz

Edited April 2, 2009 by Butuz

[Soulfish]

Hmm was warned off blades years ago by the LEA after they upgraded their datacentre and ended up being forced to spend a fortune on upgrading their electricity supply as the blades were so power hungry. They seem to be very power hungry, very complicated, and very expensive for the number of cores they provide, especially compared ot modern sun servers that give 8 cores in 1u, 24 cores in 2u and 36 cores in 4u?

 

Can I turn it around on you Toledo and ask - what are the advantages of blades in schools?

 

Butuz

 

I have to say that when I was looking at what was offered by blades vs rack mount servers I couldn't really make the business case for them at the moment. You do get the advantage of being able to aggregate things (with the various switch modules that plug into the chassis fabric) to reduce cabling with blade servers, but without having two or more chassis it did seem very much like you still had a single point of failure.

[DMcCoy]

can i ask why you'd not go down the blade route given the choice ?

 

Is it your experience with a particular vendors blade offering or the general concept. I think one of the problems with blades has been that apart from ibm, none of the vendors appear to have offered investment protection [forward compatibility] from the get go with the blade chassis. Main stumbling block for us is initial cost, not to mention the variety of options which add to the cost.

 

the new 1U servers seem to represent the best value, but the cost of implementing fibre channel in such servers doesn't appear to be getting any cheaper.

 

very limited expansion, having to use all of the same type of module for all blades. Noise levels are high too. Another vendor may have been better, and there are some nice things like managing the chassis instead of individual blades, built in kvm.

 

I think power savings etc tend to be rather overstated for marketing purposes, they really are just small severs with a few shared i/o modules.

[torledo]

Hmm was warned off blades years ago by the LEA after they upgraded their datacentre and ended up being forced to spend a fortune on upgrading their electricity supply as the blades were so power hungry. They seem to be very power hungry, very complicated, and very expensive for the number of cores they provide, especially compared ot modern sun servers that give 8 cores in 1u, 24 cores in 2u and 36 cores in 4u in single servers?

 

Can I turn it around on you Toledo and ask - what are the advantages of blades in schools?

 

Butuz

 

i think there's a very different scalability issue between an LEA's requirements with blades and a schools. An LEA would typically go in for super high density, and 'enterprise' blade chassis which need to be wired in. And it goes without saying hundreds of cores in a 42U rack is going to need a lot of power, cooling and generate a lot of noise.

 

But a school can go in for the plug in variety, and as a couple of posters have said, the advantage in my head is in managing a single chassis and aggregating power and network connections. i do see them as an alternate way of setting up a group of servers, rather than have four pizza box servers, four to eight PCI cards, 8 power supplies, 4 kvm connection, 4 iLO connection, you can reduce that cable count down quite drastically with blades as many of these connections are aggregated. And with the use of actual switch modules within the blade itself rather than passthroughs that cable count can reduce even further...

 

i must admit i'm sold on the idea so long as you use a smb friendly version and the vendor has a commitment to supported new blades in older chassis [the old future proofing chestnut]. also it should be cost effective even at low density i.e a half or even quarter populated chassis.

[Butuz]

Thanks torledo - you prompted me to, instead of going to bed, log on to the sun website and do an initial comparison based on the SUN Blade 6000 chassis, and actually - you've really suprised me as, at list price, even when only using 4 of the 10 blade slots, the sun blade system works out considerably cheaper than what I was originally intending to buy (though it does take up more room, and use more power though).

 

Unfortunatly for me - the sun Blade 6000 is not on the matching grant - so when talking matching grant prices into account - the blade system works out more expensive again

 

Very interesting though, and thanks for bringing it to my attention as it looks like when you take into account future expansion the blade server could work out consierably cheaper on the long run, especially by the time you fill all 10 slots - by then it is using 2u less rack space, and half the power of 1u servers.......

 

Butuz

Edited April 2, 2009 by Butuz