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A backplane is nontrivial to design electrically/mechanically and expensive to manufacture (even just some high quality connectors will quickly run up your BOM)
by q3k 5y ago
A backplane is nontrivial to design electrically/mechanically and expensive to manufacture (even just some high quality connectors will quickly run up your BOM). If you also want to carry networking there you'll end up having to do some semi-custom network switch design, which locks you into a particular switch/ASIC vendor 'forever', or at least vastly increases friction when wanting to upgrade. Yes, they already have their own PCBA and some mechanical design, but it's very simple compared to what it takes to design a reliable backplane with an integrated power supply and network switch.
At the end of the day this a low-cost system for low-cost devices. IMO the little benefit from having a backplane is not worth the R&D cost and the downsides of fully backplaned blade systems.
And this is not just about this project: from what I see, the industry seems to have rejected fully integrated blade systems. Dell's M1000e is dying, and I don't think I've seen HPE bladecenters in years. Instead, semi-integrated systems like Supermicro's high-density offering is king. No proprietary chassis management system, no proprietary network switches, no locking yourself into whatever the backplane can carry.
- formerly_proven 5y agoAt work we have oodles of 2U4N (8P) systems. Just going by eye I'd guess these have the same or even higher density than a blade center, while allowing more granular scaling, and being a standard form factor, and you get both front and back access to each node, so you can have whatever I/O you want, and you don't need a lift to handle the chassis.
- Merocle 5y agototally agree, thanks
- noizejoy 5y ago> the industry seems to have rejected fully integrated blade systems In my probably too simplistic mental model, the blade systems approach got overrun by the advent of multicore processors combined with virtualization and containers. While not 100% equivalent, it’s close enough and the price difference ends up making the decision in most scenarios.
- tw04 5y ago> And this is not just about this project: from what I see, the industry seems to have rejected fully integrated blade systems. Dell's M1000e is dying, and I don't think I've seen HPE bladecenters in years. No offense but this is just wrong. HPe is all in with their synergy platform (the replacement to bladecenter that has been out for several years now). Cisco just released their next gen UCS blade platform as well. Dell has never been a dominant player in blades. https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/at-a-47-cagr-data-center-blade-server-market-2021-is-expected-to-register-a-significant-growth-by-increasing-demand-from-end-user-industries-including-small-size-organization-2021-07-24 https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/at-a-47-cagr-data-...
- q3k 5y agoNot offended. This is a good reminder that this industry is far and wide enough that different people will see different subsets of it, and just because I observe something doesn't make it universal :).