While blade computing promises many benefits, eradicating the requirement for labor-intensive, software configuration in complex application environments is not one of them – despite supplier claims to the contrary. This is especially true in server consolidation projects. While blade computing can mitigate many hardware and hardware administration costs, the main challenge of any program to reduce server counts remains application, and not hardware, consolidation. For example, applications demanding extreme levels of processor, I/O, and storage support (e.g., very large transaction processing systems) will continue to be better served by very large symmetric processing complexes. In general, users should recognize if and when applications can reliably co-exist with each other, and implement consolidation plans around these considerations, not narrow concerns for server counts.
Action Item: Blade technologies do not change the constraints imposed by the challenges of merging applications in server consolidation efforts. Blade technologies are an excellent foundation in like-application environments, but do not mitigate the problems of operating extremely divergent application domains.
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