Q: What are the physical server storage space savings clients can expect when virtualizing blade servers?
Meet the expert
Martin MacLeod is an IT consultant based in London with several years' experience deploying and supporting blade servers in volume. He also blogs at bladewatch.com, where he tracks news on blade servers, grids and virtualization. Listen to the rest of Martin's answers on blade server virtualization by downloading our blade server virtualization podcast.
You should be looking at making server storage space savings on a blade's infrastructure based on the number of sessions you can create per blade. That can vary from 10 to four. But the biggest win you're going to be getting on a blade server virtualization project is the number of legacy systems and current systems that you can virtualize in a pure, dense format to one enclosure of blades. Say, for example, you have 700 HP DL380s, you might be able to consolidate that onto 70 or 140 blades, depending on how they're set up. That's a significant saving in cabinet space and power. You need to work out the math involved in that carefully.
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