i've been google'ng alot about blade servers technology, but still i didn't understand how the backplane of the blade server co-ordinate the task of the blades and manage the load balance between them in case of virtual machine installed on.
plus how the blade server boot ? is their something like a BIOS on the back plane that detected the blades in the chassis and load the OS ?
any help ?
Question on blade servers
Question on blade servers
There is an UNEQUAL amount of good and bad in most things, the trick is to work out the ratio and act accordingly. "The Jester"
Re: Question on blade servers
Yes.
Typically each Blade has its own job, and then another blade can be redundant to it.
One blade will control the database, another blade, the RAID, another network directory and DHCP, another AutoCad.
When you say re-boot, the entire system is not shut down and rebooted, but the offending blade, thus a redundant blade can take over its job, and the entire network/other blades do not even know.
DNR
Typically each Blade has its own job, and then another blade can be redundant to it.
One blade will control the database, another blade, the RAID, another network directory and DHCP, another AutoCad.
When you say re-boot, the entire system is not shut down and rebooted, but the offending blade, thus a redundant blade can take over its job, and the entire network/other blades do not even know.
DNR
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He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in Darkness, and Light dwells with him.
He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in Darkness, and Light dwells with him.
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bad_brain
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Re: Question on blade servers
blades have their own HDD (can be shared, dedicated, internal or external or via backplane), so the OS is loaded like on every other system. how it is done depends on the manufacturer, there is no "blade standard", so HP does it different than Dell, etc.
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Polynomial
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Re: Question on blade servers
I run an IBM BladeCenter in my garage. The backplane is just a high-speed fibre network connection, which is accessed via a NIC (Network Interface Card) on the blade. You communicate between blades using standard network protocols (e.g. IP, TCP, UDP). Some enclosures provide DCHP functionality to assign each blade its own IP address automatically, though I have my IP addresses configured to be static for easy identification of traffic (i.e. 10.0.0.101 -> 10.0.0.114 for blades 1 -> 14). The coordination of tasks is left to the application software you have installed on your blades. For example, I have a MySQL server running over 4 of my blades which runs as 1 master and 3 slaves. It may be possible to configure all blades in one enclosure to function as a single system by setting up cloud computing, but I am unaware of the specifics of how to set this up.