Blade Servers
 

I have a couple of questions about blade servers.

1) Is the general idea that all individual blades appear as a single 'system'?

2) If 1) is true then would a chassis with two blades with 2 cpus each, 1GB of memory, and 1 40GB drive appear as a system with 4 cpus, 2GB of memory, and 2 disks sda and sbb?

3) How does each blade server talk with each other? I would assume via chassis backplane.

4) Does the chassis/backplane deal with all the clustering or is there software needed to make all the blades appear as a single machine?

I have a chance to pick up a chassis and two blades for a great price and I was wondering how easy would it be to install Cent OS 5 or FC7 on it?

Keith

Blade systems save space, that's all. Each blade is an individual system. You can use them that way, or install cluster software if your applications are suited to that environment. Communication is a function of configuration. Most just use regular Ethernet, but other physical layers can be used for specific use (like clustering).