Data center server packaging technology

The purpose of this paper is to describe BladeCenter/spl trade/ packaging technology and compare with 1U and 2U rack systems to illustrate the improvements. The power and thermal design challenges are described. The paper covers in detail power and thermal design advantages, and overall cost performance compared to 1U servers. A blade server is a rack-optimized server architecture designed to include the benefits of standardized 1U rack systems while eliminating the complications associated with these systems. The term BladeCenter refers to a chassis that can hold a number of hot-swappable devices called blades server. A blade sever is an independent server containing one or more processors, memory, disk storage, and network controllers. The BladeCenter was created to simplify the deployment of servers in an enterprise infrastructure.