SY Presentation on PC Blade Technology

Serving North & West Yorkshire

SY Presentation on PC Blade Technology.

Thursday 17th March 2005
Speakers:Yusuf Chadun and James Schneider from ClearCube.
Venue:Hotel Metropole Leeds.

This was a very good presentation with wide appeal. The overview was of interest to anyone involved with end users and/or support staff (especially when there is a malfunction), return on investment (ROI) or total cost of ownership. The main section was technical, with brief references back to the business benefits of the technology.

Guy Snook of SY, a young company specialising in emerging technologies, introduced the main speakers. James Schneider compared traditional computers with those from ClearCube, looking at the desktop environment and the challenges of traditional thick client situation. He then outlined the ClearCube idea of centralizing the PC infrastructure, leaving only peripherals (monitor, keyboard etc.) and a small user port on the desktop. From this basis he went on to explain the benefits of centralized PCs. These include reduced support costs, reduced downtime, faster repairs (from the user perspective) and a clearer, quieter desktop (as the user port has no moving parts). James then gave an overview of a ClearCube solution. This involves a management suite, the cage housing up to 8 blades, the PC blade itself (a PC that delivers computing to a desktop from a centralized location) and the user port that sits on the desktop.

This led neatly into Yusuf Chadun’s technical presentation during which samples of hardware were handed round. The technology is portrayed in three layers. Layer one is the PC hardware itself i.e. the PC Blade, which involves industry standard components. Intel processors are used and each blade has its own power supply unit, hard drive, graphics card etc. They run Windows 2000, XP or Linux operating systems and can be dual boot. Each blade is separate from the others so if you want to upgrade all clients you have to do each one but they are all in one place which is easier for support.

Layer two is the infrastructure compromised of user port (on the desk), cage and a backpack (for remote management of the blades). The distance between desktop and blade can be up to 200m using CAT5, 150m using CAT6 and 500m using fibre. There is also a user port which supports connection over switched Ethernet networks which gives unlimited distance subject to bandwidth. The user ports are small (e.g. 3.2cm deep x 21cm x 12.7cm) and quiet. There are sockets for monitor, keyboard, mouse, sound, power, USBs, and Blade connection. The data is sent to the blade over 3 of the pairs of CAT cable.

The cage contains up to 8 blades, the backpack which has a management card, and a fan tray. You can use the management software to swap a user port from the blade it is physically connected to to another if there is a hardware problem. There is also an admin port which allows the help desk to view or take control of a blade to resolve user problems.

Layer three is the system management software control centre, grid centre, switch manager, data failover, blade manager. With these tools you can monitor the state of PCs, get h/w and s/w inventory, receive tailored alerts (e.g. send an alert if free space on hard drive drops below 100Mb), switch users between blades, control data backups. The grid centre allows dedicated user to blade mapping or dynamic mapping (e.g. to least utilised blade). Dedicated mapping can be very useful allowing each user to have his/her own tailored desktop regardless of where they log in from.

The talk was very informative and entertaining, with questions interspersed throughout and at the end. I believe that it set lots of minds working. A fuller write up is available on our web site.

Margaret Moore