A Research Report from Clabby Analytics
Executive Summary
In this Research Report, Clabby Analytics takes a closer look at IBM’s Flex System converged architecture. We compare the new Flex System advanced blade offering to its closest rival: traditional blade architecture. And what we find is that Flex System offers superior manageability, faster communications, more storage capacity (using up to eight internal solid state drives [SSDs] per compute node) and better storage management — as well as broader/better physical/virtual system management — than all of today’s leading blade competitors.
Introduction
For over a decade Clabby Analytics has been a big fan of blade architecture. We like blade designs (the ability of blades to share a chassis and common components such as power supplies and fans — reducing energy and real estate requirements). We like blade flexibility (the ability to run multiple operating environments such as Windows, Linux, and Unix); and the ability to run different processors (for instance, x86, POWER, and field programmable gate arrays). We like blade extensions in reliability/availability/serviceability (RAS). And we like the way that some blades handle virtual I/O (this simplifies the assignment of network addresses). However, today’s blade architectures have some hardware and software limitations as compared with new “converged systems” designs:
