This morning in staff meeting, we took a few moments to correlate on the dates for decommissioning and aging “IBM Blade Center”. These are stalwart little units that we’ve used for years. At just 8U (approximately 14″) high, you can stack six of these in a standard nineteen-inch 48U rack.
These things give off heat like a $@^#)$*^&!). I mean, seriously, you stand in front of a wall of these guys, and you’re freezing your privates off from the amount of A/C required to keep them cool, while if you stand behind them, you’re bathing in sweat.
Their strong suit, though, is how much “rack density” you gain. Each Blade Center holds 14 blades. That is, 14 fully-functional computers with somewhere between two and eight Intel Xeon CPUs at 1.6 to 3.0GHz apiece, at least 6GB of RAM, and around 150GB of hard drive space.
That’s up to 84 fully-functioning computers — in the same league as today’s higher-end desktop computers as far as processing power goes — in a space smaller than your broom closet.
These Blades are also extraordinarily manageable and easy to work on. IBM did a great job designing them, and we’re sad to see them go to be replaced by a bunch of 1U servers which aren’t anywhere near as rack-dense or easily maintainable. The new units, however, have the virtue of being the corporate standard due to extreme discounts from a major retailer. And the fact is, these new boxes are much faster than the aging Blade Centers. Downside: they are much less rack-dense, and due to heat management issues, we can’t fit more than 14 in a single rack, rather than the 84 we could run from IBM.
I’m not entirely excited about the replacements, as you can probably tell. In my gut, it feels like we’re “vendor swapping” simply to keep some bean-counters happy, and exchanging to an inferior tech because it’s easier than trying to push through a purchase with a vendor who doesn’t have a favorable sales relationship with us.
Anyway, a cost that needs to be factored in when planning large-scale computing infrastructure is power usage. Fully-loaded, these blade centers consume more than 5,500 watts of power (perhaps 2200 or so on average because these are older/slower units). That’s about the same usage as a five-ton air-conditioner unit, but these things run ALL THE TIME and don’t cycle on and off like an AC unit. Plus, in the summer, you need to run an AC unit just to keep these bad boys cool.
But, hey, if there is not much of a market for a unit, occasionally my employer makes older machines available to employees for a discount or for the price of “you haul this 200 lb monstrosity away”. I have an old Sun E4200 in my garage awaiting conversion into a refrigerator from this very sort of deal.
If I wanted to actually run this unit, though, and use the 14 computer embedded in it, how much would it cost? Well, the equation is 5.5kw * 24 hrs * 7 days * 4 weeks * .08 = right near $300/month just in power costs to run the beast. Maybe as low as $150 if you’re running older/slower blades.
Ouch. I pity the small company who will end up buying this unit at a deep discount if they don’t plan for the power cost.