Hi guys,
I am wondering for a small shop which way we should lean. We currently run on 2 hosts right now. We are duplicating our environment for DR and also piloting XenDesktop soon afterwards (we use XenApps right now). Potentially we could see as many as 100-200 users for XenDesktop if the pilot goes well.We're still a small shop at that point, do you guys think the scalability of blade tech is worth going for versus the initial infrastructure cost?
Racks.
I would suggest rack mounted / brick based systems would be most efficient. With blade you have the up front capital investment for the chassis and often need to purchase new proprietary switch modules or pass throughs which all adds up to an expensive investment just for couple of hosts each site.
Also moving forwards amount of IO connectivity (both network and disk) in blades "can" be restrictive in certain configurations and also you often only have max of 8 DIMMS slots which can in some cases restrict number of VM's you acheive per blade especially with developments in fast multi core processors.
also one recent experience is that PCI NIC's in standard 1 or 2U systems are very cheap howeever in blades you have limited, more expensive choices from the one vendor, which isnt an issue with physical blades however when used as virtual hosts we need to consume more and more ports for this and that connectivity...
hope this helps...
Agree with all. Racks esp with VMWare.