might be a dumb question but i saw someone posted some dell 1855 and 1955's for sale for pretty cheap. from what i can tell they hold 10 blades. i was wondering, how would something like blade servers work with unraid or will they work at all? would i have to buy a license for each blade?

https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/pe1955_spec_sheet.pdf

Can't speak to how well they would work, but they would be individual servers inside a single housing. You'd need a license for each 'blade'.

13 hours ago, GroxyPod said:

Can't speak to how well they would work, but they would be individual servers inside a single housing. You'd need a license for each 'blade'.

is their some sort of control program or os? or is it basically 10 individual computers (blades) inside 1 chassis? 

2 hours ago, orkid1989 said:

is their some sort of control program or os? or is it basically 10 individual computers (blades) inside 1 chassis? 

 

Generally, a blade system shares power / networking / cooling in a single chassis for maximizing space. Some systems come with a central management console to control the blades (think IPMI). You can virtualize but at the end of the day, it's still a form factor and each blade is isolated in terms of computing power per server.

 

The idea of having 4 CPUs on a single system is nice though, especially if you plan to use ESXi or unraid on that server blade for VMs. The only issue is the Dell 1955 can only support Xeon 5300s which are 4c/4t.