Bladed Computers
Bladed Computers? A blade computer, also called a PC blade, is a computer that is entirely contained in a thin, modular circuit card placed in a centralized, secure location such as a server rack. A cable connects the card to the user's display, keyboard and mouse. Vendors of blade PCs include ClearCube and HP.
A blade computer is a form of client or personal computer (PC). In conjunction with a client access device (usually a thin client) on a user's desk, the supporting blade PC is typically housed in a rack enclosure, usually in a datacenter or specialised environment. Together, they accomplish many of the same functions of a traditional PC, but they also take advantage of many of the architectural achievements pioneered by blade servers.
Like a traditional PC, a blade computer has a CPU, RAM and a hard drive. It may or may not have an integrated graphics sub-system. Some can support multiple hard drives. It is in a “blade” form that plugs into an enclosure. Enclosures offered by current blade PC vendors are similar but not identical. Most have moved the power supplies, cooling fans and some management capabilities from the blade PC to the enclosure. Up to 14 enclosures can be placed in one industry standard 42U rack.
Bladed Computers?
Blade computers support one or more common operating systems (for instance Microsoft has created a “blade PC” version of their XP and Vista Business operating systems and many Linux distributions are installable). Importantly, these solutions are intended to support one user per discrete device. This is a major difference from server-based computing, which supports multiple users simultaneously using an application hosted on one discrete server (be it a discrete piece of hardware or a discrete virtual machine on a server).
Typically, those operations are done quicker ("accelerated") on the card than the processor could perform on its own because the accelerator incorporate specialized logic to perform a set of complex operations in a way that cannot be implemented in software as easily or as efficiently.
Access to the device is usually achieved via various Virtual Network Computing (VNC), which allows users to log on to the blade PC via a client device (usually a thin client). Once logged on the end user experience is largely the same as if they were logged on to a local PC. It is less effective at delivering multimedia, in part because the audio and video are not synchronized, so in circumstances where there is increasing latency, there is a proportional decrease in the quality of the end user experience. All protocols are negatively impacted by increasing latency between the end user’s access device and the blade PC. One of the biggest challenges the blade PC vendors have experienced is how to minimize the impact of latency and deliver an end user experience comparable to that offered by a traditional PC, and there has been a number of new entrants in this sub-category of the blade PC in 2007.
Here are the key reasons behind the growing interest of businesses like yours in Bladed Computers:
- Enhanced data security because all data can be maintained in the datacenter and can more easily be saved to a mass storage device, so if the access device is stolen or destroyed the data is not compromised
- Reduced Total Cost of Ownership due to consolidation, standardization, and more redundancy
- Better disaster tolerance for end users because with MS RDP end users can log in from anywhere to their blade PC, so even if their office is quarantined (due to a contagious disease outbreak, for instance), they can continue to have access to their blade PC and their data files so they remain productive
Hire the Best Bladed Computers developers
- Maximizing the end user experience (this is a “ticket” to entry – end user experience must be comparable to at least low-end traditional PCs).
- Minimizing acquisition cost (as a result traditional PC components are frequently used rather than more expensive server components)
- Maximizing density (because if these devices are to replace millions of traditional PCs by moving into datacenter they must minimize the amount of expensive datacenters space they require)
- Minimizing power consumption (minimizing power input and heat output in a datacenter is critical to keeping data centers properly cooled and datacenter costs down)
- Similar to traditional PCs to deploy and integrate (ease of integration is critical, or the barriers to adoption will prohibit widespread success for the category)
- Easy to manage with the same tools used for other datacenter based HW and SW (otherwise it becomes onerous extra work)