Eye on Blades: Trends in server blades and storage

Thank you note our blade VARs

Jason Newton — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:25:00 GMT

Tuesday, all of us at HP were honored to receive your votes at the 2008 VARBusiness Annual Report Card Awards for ARC Company of the Year in both the Midrange (High-End) Server and Volume Mainstream Business Server categories. There are a lot of awards out there, but this one means a lot more to us....(read more)

Blades in Earnings Spotlight Today

Jason Newton — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:54:00 GMT

Dont worry, we dont have big heads. We know its a short trip from the penthouse to the outhouse. But its always good to take a step back and let the team celebrate a job well done. Heres a sample of some of todays HP earning news featuring blade results. And some pics of that great team behind it. ...(read more)

The Rumble Down Under. . . On Blade Standards

Jason Newton — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:09:00 GMT

This whole topic of 'blade incompatibility' really bugs Gary, Richard and me. If you want to know why, tune your web browser to the panel discussion with IBM's Doug Balog, Intel's Kurt Lender and the referee, er, moderator, Rob Mitchell from Computerworld. You can also check back here in a few days where we'll share our thoughts in a new blog and then we'll give you a review of the discussion. ...(read more)

Follow the blade team on Twitter!

Jason Newton — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 03:56:00 GMT

We’re going to start using Twitter a lot more to announce blog posts, news, new features, special offers, events, and more. If you want to be one of the first ones to know, make sure to follow us on Twitter !...(read more)

Games vendors play . . . with power efficiency claims

Gary Thome — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:13:00 GMT

These days, server power efficiency is top of mind for everyone. Five years ago, most customers had no idea how much power a server used. Now, everyone knows - its a lot. In some cases, customers are making power consumption the primary criteria for vendor selection. So why is it so dang hard to get a straight story on exactly what options are the most power efficient? We'll fill you in on the dirty little secrets you need to know. ...(read more)

Is blade a verb?

Jason Newton — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:39:00 GMT

We like to think so. In fact, we really hate the wiki definition (noun) of blade. Basically, a 'smaller server flipped on its side'. Blades have expanded so far beyond the early days of 2000, the old definition just doesnt ring true to me any more. How do you define blade? ...(read more)

Blade Hacks: CLI Tips and Tricks

Jason Newton — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 04:41:00 GMT

We're starting a new series on the blade blog called 'Blade Hacks'. For our first post, I wanted to focus on the command line interface of the Onboard Administrator. A lot of people love its simplicity of the GUI, but our real power users love the amount of control it puts at their fingertips via the CLI. Now you can get the secrets of the experts. ...(read more)

5 Steps to Safer Virtual Servers

Jason Newton — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:17:00 GMT

We hear questions all the time about the security issues of virtual servers. To summarize, "is it too many eggs in one basket?" Chris Whitener, HP's chief security strategist offered 5 steps to safer virtual servers in a recent article in CIO magazine....(read more)

The numbers don’t lie. Customers aren’t stupid

robert.cashman@hp.com — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

There are a lot of materials available to customers and partners around the competitive strengths and weaknesses of the major players in the blade market. Lots of claims, lots of counter-claims, YouTube videos, podcasts, press releases, full-page ads, web banners, reports and the list goes on and on and on. Taking a step back, do customers make their decision based on this kind of marketing? ...(read more)

Even a Prius can run out gas

Jason Newton — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:02:00 GMT

I snapped this picture below on the way to work Friday. At first glance, it's simply a car that ran out of gas. A closer look shows it's a Prius. Huh?!? How do you run out of gas in a Prius? A datacenter has a gas gauge too. Have you checked yours lately? ...(read more)

Cook better with HP Virtual Connect

Jason Newton — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:25:00 GMT

The Virtual Connect cookbook has been out for awhile, but we heard from a lot of folks that no one knew about it. Enter the communication power of the blade blog. ...(read more)

How many billions does IBM need to screw in a light bulb?

Jason Newton — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:20:00 GMT

If I see one more press release from IBM announcing another one billion dollar investment, I'm going to have to start a new line of jokes. Seriously, have you ever noticed that every time IBM wants to get in the news with something that's just barely news worthy, they add "$1 Billion" to the subhead? ...(read more)

Ghosts of marketing past

Jason Newton — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:02:00 GMT

Eight years ago, we started touting blades to the masses. Do you remember the original messages? More servers per rack! Save datacenter floor space!! Introducing the Density Optimized Server!!! Now the bell tolls for me. ...(read more)

Will SAS be the new enterprise storage standard?

Jason Newton — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:01:00 GMT

Yesterday, Lee Johns blogged about some interesting new storage solutions based on Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). I did some digging and found some good resources if you want to learn more about SAS. The first is our collection of white papers, articles...(read more)

Silly Rabbit, PODs are for Data Centers

Jason Newton — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:31:00 GMT

To me, PODs create an interesting quesiton for the future of technology buyers (and marketers). If PODs become a datacenter standard, will anyone care whats inside? The POD is packed with the 18 essential vitamins and minerals CIOs demand and the great taste system admins love. So how much do the individual technologies inside really matter? ...(read more)