Whats the difference between Blade Server and Rack Mount Server?

Rack-mount servers are complete systems, where as a blade server is a component in a blade system, and will not function without further money, time spent.

Rack-mount servers generally contain all necessary components, making them easy to configure as standalone systems, although they can be customized / configured to be more interdependent, or to fill a specific role(e.g. SAN, "virtualization", "wish i knew").

Rack-mount servers are built to fit directly into the standard 19-inch-rack-form-factor, and each one takes up some multiple of "Rack Units" space(i.e. 1U, 2U...). A blade server by contrast fits into a chassis / enclosure, which is then mounted on the rack. A typical enclosure can fit from 8 to 16 server modules, and takes up from 5U to 10U space on the rack.

A blade server must be in its enclosure in order to function, as it is an incomplete system on its own. Enclosures must be filled out with the necessary modules for power-supply, fans, and I/O("interconnects" & management/O.A.)in order for them to work.

It is also important to note that midplanes(the part that connects the blades to the backplane modules) are nonstandard, and will be different for each brand, so there is no way to mix and match parts across vendors.

Rack-mount servers generally contain all the standard ports/connections, making them easier to hook up and get running, so from the perspective of a hobbyist, you'd probably be better off looking into a rack-mount server(or a tower).

Major Blade Brands:

Dell PowerEdge Blades & Enclosures
HP/HPE BladeSystem Enclosure & Proliant
Lenovo Flex System Blade & Chassis
Cisco UCS Blade & Chassis
Supermicro Superblade & Chassis

Blade Chassis/Enclosure Spec. Sheets:

kipbits

Posted 2015-01-07T09:39:34.933

Reputation: 47

2Google "Whats the difference between Blade Server and Rack Mount Server?" and start reading ... – DavidPostill – 2015-01-07T09:41:52.050

1How are a blade server and a rack server appearing the same? – mtak – 2015-01-07T10:25:29.230

1This is way too broad of a question. Blade servers and rackmount servers can both be configured in a wide variety of ways. For example, they can be set up with terminals that have a single KB/mouse/monitor that slides out, or via KVM, or none at all and either be connected to in-band via network, or out-of-band via network, or even through a serial switch. – MaQleod – 2015-01-07T18:01:33.830

Whats the difference between Blade Server and Rack Mount Server?

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