Build-a-Blade Resuable blade servers you can design and build yourself that won't bust your power bill or your budget!

 

       

NEWS: The new streamlined Version2 design for our BB-ITX96 is released! Press release here Details here.

We now have a line of three form factor chassis: Thin Mini-ITX, Mini-ITX, and MicroATX to suit almost any need, from rendering farms, to custom office servers, to home theatre and media management systems.

Features - What is Build-a-Blade?

Imagine a blade server you can build yourself or buy fully configured to your specs, but uses a third to a fifth of the power compared to conventional server solutions. This is what we offer, a system that is the first of its kind. BAB is flexible blade chassis system that is designed around industry standard Mini-ITX and Thin Mini-ITX components offering a low-power and full-power alternatives to expensive and proprietary commercial blade systems.



Power consumption for servers is a big deal, especially with power costs expected to increase sharply in the next 20 years.


Source: Department of Energy - historical rates to 2011, and 5% annual increase applied for forecast to 2031.

Greater power consumption results in more heat, less efficient components and higher electric bills. Build-a-Blade servers combine utilize energy efficient technologies to deliver efficiency gains well below the same power envelop of older single core based servers.

Our product line offers a renewable ROI (because you keep the blade system and upgrade the internals over the years), far exceeding traditional blade systems and is a platform that runs on AC or DC power, making it suitable for remote or green applications. It features architecture that allows you to mix blade hardware configurations in a single chassis and is a scalable solution that can support small business needs, OEM applications, and server/rendering farm deployments. BAB offers a unique solution for cooling and power consumption problems that plague server rooms and is a RoHS compliant product proudly designed and made in the USA! We offer starter kits for do-it-yourself blade systems as well as fully configured systems to your specifications.

Benefits

• High density computing with very low power - this translates into operational savings in kilowatt-hours not only for the servers, but also for the air conditioning removing waste heat in server rooms - a win-win advantage.
• You aren't tied to a proprietary design - all our blades use standard off the shelf computer components
• You can design and build blades yourself to your specifications, or choose from our ready made systems
• Unlike proprietary blade systems, we offer reusable blade trays - when your washer/dryer at home needs replacement, do you throw away your house to replace the appliances inside? Of course not - our blade chassis stays in place, you simply upgrade the appliances inside with the latest technology
• Your long term ROI is very high, because when you need more computing power, you simply swap out motherboards, processors, drives, etc. and put the blade back into the chassis. No waste, no re-racking, no hassle.
• Our unique power supply system allows you to swap a power supply out in seconds - and it keeps waste heat out the main chassis, making cooling efficiency high and serviceability a snap!
• Deployment diversity  - you can mix Atoms, Pentiums, I3/I5/I7, and Xeon processors in a single chassis
• Supports the latest low power Cedar Trail and Marshall Town motherboards from Intel
• 12 volts DC or 120/240 volts AC power, your choice - our system supports both without needing extras
• Integrated alarms - ensure that fan failure or over-temperature don't become problems
• Drive support for RAID - up to 6 hard drives or SSD's can be placed on a single blade tray
• You can start small with one blade, one chassis, grow as you need by adding blades

 

Applications

• Small businesses with small spaces that need to run economical servers in small spaces
• Large businesses with IT departments that need multiple servers, but want a long term ROI via upgradeability
• Remote applications, where systems operate on DC power such as solar, wind, or other green power sources
• Cloud server farms
• Rendering or calculation server farms
• Data center in a shipping container (like Google, here)
• Presentation and home theater systems/media rooms requiring multiple media servers in a small space
• Multiple pane digital sign control clusters
• Broadcast TV or Radio control rooms needing mutliple computers, broadcast remote trucks for 12volt operation
• Process control systems requiring many specialized PC's in a common location
• OEM's that want to build a custom deployment of multiple computer systems into a single integrated chassis
• ISP's that want to be able to rent out dedicated servers, and want to be able to offer a variety of platforms inexpensively

Read the backstory on how this product came to be here

Have configuration questions? Need a quote? Contact support

 

 

 

 

Build-a-Blade supports:

 

 

Our company is a certified Intel Technology Provider: