Lenovo Blade Servers [EOL] Reviews and Pricing

Senior Manager of IT at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 28, 2013

Meets rigorus challenges however requires fair amount invesment

I believe that blade servers have become popular building blocks for enabling converged data centers – and, they also have their own idiosyncrasies.

Blade solutions provide increased server density, better power and cooling efficiency and more flexible management functions when compared with standalone servers. They require a fair bit of investment, which is why they aren’t a good choice if you only need to deploy a couple of servers.

I have personally built and used numerous server types and brands. I’ve deployed them in land based facilities across the globe and on occasion even aboard ship – which is a huge challenge in itself.

In my line of work speed is critical to mission success and it’s extremely important that equipment be easy to install, compatible with the existing environment… simply put expeditionary.

The one brand that has consistently met the rigorous challenges of global deployment and mastered the most demanding workloads has been the IBM power blade solutions.

IBM blade solutions save you time and trouble. Here's how:

•Unlike other vendors, IBM deliver power blades and chassis preassembled. You don't spend hours installing processors, memory and drives.

•You can rack an entire integrated chassis in the time it takes to rack a traditional 1U rack server.

•When you need to add additional blade servers, they slide right in.

•IBM’s BladeCenter® family technology ties Media Access Control (MAC) and World Wide Name (WWN) addresses to blade slots — not to servers or switch ports — so reconfiguring your setup is as simple as sliding a blade out of a slot and replacing it with another.

And when needed, their flexible deployment services put IBM expertise and manpower at your fingertips.

Moving beyond conventional server technology to a fresh approach at solving customer problems IBM, recently announced a new family of solutions called PureSystems. IBM calls this an “expert integrated solution”; it fits within the converged infrastructure environment.

While IBM offers competitive blade server and chassis offerings, it’s almost certain that “PureSystems” will lead the charged toward the converged infrastructure market; that’s my opinion.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user1020

Head of Data Center at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Nov 21, 2012

Download

Great value for money but be sure to have all the right components to prevent data loss if using the disk storage system.

Valuable Features:

I recommended the purchase of an IBM BladeCenter S Chassis with four HS 22 Blade Servers and 1 Disk storage system. I came up with the recommendation after reviewing other blade servers at that time. The other option was an HP C3000 with BL460 blade servers. What sold me with the BladeCenter S was the built-in disk storage system. For me, this is a great feature as you technically have a direct-attached disk storage system on the blade system itself. This for me was the better option than the HP C3000, as there is no need any more to buy a separate disk storage system.

Room for Improvement:

It was quite unfortunate that I lost data while using this blade server. There were a lot of factors, but I believe it should not have happened. I base this from the fact that we haven't lost any data from our HP C3000 enclosure and BL460 blade servers. One of the main things that I believe led to the data loss was the poor eco-system of vendors and knowledgeable solution providers for IBM in our part of the country. The vendor that sold us was just box-pushing the product without adequate knowledge in providing a solution that should not loose any data. I say this because we have another blade system from Cisco and it just works. We have a very knowledgeable system integrator and they provide excellent support. I just wish IBM here would also do the same.Overall, the product has great value for money. Under the right circumstances, I would definitely recommend this product. You should select a vendor that is knowledgeable about the solution and offer all the necessary components to protect the disk storage system from catastrophic data loss.

Other Advice:

Also, make sure that you include implementation services as well. Though I was able to successfully configure the blade system without any help from the vendor or IBM representatives, it took a lot of time and a lot of experimentation. Implementation services can cost a lot, but for me it would be well worth it considering the investment on this product is significant.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user1068Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Report as inappropriate

Jun 2, 2013

We run Blade Servers in our data center. I must say that the performance is marvelous and the support we get from IBM is just great. Although they do not have a support center in my country, they are always there to assist; if possible someone travels to our company and country to assist or we have someone in our team travel to the nearest country where they have an office for training. This can be expensive for us but the benefits we get when the servers are up and up are much better, and worth it.

Find out what your peers are saying about Lenovo, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco and others in Blade Servers. Updated: May 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

it_user1143

Network Manager at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Jul 15, 2012

Download

IBM BladeCenter HS22 is ideal for midsize businesses and allows you to scale your data center

Valuable Features:

BladeCenter HS22 provides great performance and reliability, with two Intel Xeon 5600 (3.60 GHz) processors and 12 VLP DDR-3 memory DIMMs, with expansion capability of 192 GB.HS22 is designed to host mainstream business applications and virtualization. Deployment and customization is quick and easy with the advantage of UEFI based tools.HS22 has a special mechanical design to cool the blade in challenging circumstances. Exceptional power management capabilities are provided with integrated power management tools like “IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager.”Less expensive than most of the Blade Servers available in this configuration.

Room for Improvement:

Very stable servers; so far have not found any inconsistencies.

Other Advice:

BladeCenter HS22 uses two Intel Xeon 5600 processors and RAM expandable up to 192 GB for enhanced performance of your business applications or virtualization requirements.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.