I find myself shrug apathetically to most technology announcements and the BladeCenter S was no exception.  I remember wondering "Why would anyone want a small IBM BladeCenter with built in SAS storage?".  Most of my experience with the IBM BladeCenter is with larger SAP BWA projects where customers want a large number of blades coupled with enterprise performance storage, so the BladeCenter S just didn't seem useful.

Recently IBM announced support for the BladeCenter S for smaller BWA systems.  Again I was not impressed.  This was until I configured two systems using four blades.  One system based on the BladeCenter H  with DS4700 and the other based on BladeCenter S with internal storage.  I was amazed to find the BladeCenter S solution was nearly half the price of the BladeCenter H.  The ISICC (IBM & SAP International Competence Centre) guarantee similar performance between the two systems, so no compromise has been made.

This opened my eyes to the possibilities that can be realised with the BladeCenter S and BWA.  Many of our BWA customers buy BladeCenter H solutions for production, development and quality assurance.  Significant cost saving can now be made by customers switching to BladeCenter S for development and in some cases quality assurance.  Other customers with smaller BI systems may now be able to afford BWA systems where they were once too expensive.

Of course there is a downside.  Because BWA uses a shared file system (GPFS) you would not be able to upgrade a BladeCenter S BWA beyond 6 blades because of the internal storage.  You can still migrate the blades to a larger BladeCenter H and dedicated external storage, as IBM blade architecture is common throughout the range.

So from my initial apathetic shrug I'm now looking forward to my first BladeCenter S BWA installation and maybe when the next technology announcement comes along I'll think twice before shrugging.