What is blade server?

A blade server is a server chassis housing multiple thin, modular electronic cir
cuit boards, known as server blades. Each blade is a server in its own right, of
ten dedicated to a single application.
Cisco offers a Unified Computing System in its blade server portfolio: a domain,
consisted of 6U high chassis, up to 8 blade servers in each chassis, up to 20 c
hassis in a domain, all managed by a heavily modified Nexus 5K switch, rebranded
as a fabric interconnect, which converge computing and networking, and manages
the whole system as a single entity.
HP's current line consists of two chassis models, the c3000 which holds up to 8
half-height ProLiant line blades (also available in tower form), and the c7000 (
10U) which holds up to 16 half-height ProLiant blades. Dell's latest solution, t
he M1000e is a 10U modular enclosure and holds up to sixteen half-height PowerEd
ge blade servers or thirty two quarter-height blades.
The preferred zoning unit for the 3PAR StoreServ is pWWN. If you are currently u
sing Domain, Port migrating to pWWN is very easy. Simply create new zones based
on the pWWN of the host and the pWWN of the storage target, add these new zones
to your fabric switches, zoning-out the references to Domain, Port for that resp
ective HBA port. Some fabric vendor s support mixing both Domain, Port and pWWN in
the same zone. I prefer using one or the other explicitly.