Blade enclosure arrived!  Problem, power supplies not with it.  Bugger, no playtime.

My blade server arrived.  It’s so long!  70cm to be accurate.  Heavy too.

Just 45 quid for a dual xeon 3.2GHz system with 2GB mem!  No disks.  A phone call to the supplier secured a 73GB drive for £25.  Includes RAID controller and 4 network cards.  For £70 - awesome.

This one looks pretty complete.  It’s not an empty box.  It’s got power supplies and data and power sockets that the blades plug into.  It’s cheap and a popular HP one, so there’s plenty of cheap used equipment around.

Here’s a link describing what a blade server is.  Basically, lots of computers in one (big) box.

I want to find out how they work.  They have no screen and keyboard, so how do I install their OS?  How do I know they’re all ok and what they’re all doing?  How do I give them stuff to do?  How loud are they?

These are questions I don’t know the answer to.  I’m going to wade in up to my waist.