Blade Servers

The HP ProLiant BL680c G5 Server Blade delivers no-compromise performance and expansion for a 2-core to 6-core BladeSystem Server. With two or four Intel® Xeon® 7200, 7300 or 7400 series processors, 128 GB of fully buffered memory, two hot-plug serial attached SCSI (SAS) or serial ATA (SATA) hard drives, four embedded Gigabit Ethernet adapters and three I/O expansion slots, the HP ProLiant BL680c G5 delivers the density you want with the performance you need to handle the most demanding enterprise class applications. The HP ProLiant BL680c G5 server blade includes:

• Processor:
  • Two or four Intel Xeon 7400 series processors with up to 6 cores
  • Two or four Intel Xeon 7300 series 4 core processors
  • Two or four Intel Xeon 7220 series 2 core processors
    NOTE: The BL680c G5 supports either two or four processors. One and three processors are not supported.
    NOTE: All processors within the server must be identical.
  • Intel 7300 chipset supporting a 1066 MT/s Dedicated High-Speed Interconnect (DHSI)
  • Demand Based Switching (DBS) with Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology on select models
  • Up to 8 MB L2 cache (7200 and 7300 series) and 16 MB of L3 cache (7400 series)
  • Intel® Virtualization Technology
• Memory:
  • Sixteen (16) DIMM slots supporting:
    • 128 GB PC2-5300, fully buffered DDR2-667MHz memory
    • 64 GB PC2-5300, fully buffered DDR2-667MHz low power memory
    • Advanced ECC memory technology
    • Memory interleaving (2 x 1), memory mirroring, and online spare capacity
• Storage Controller:
  • Integrated HP Smart Array P400i Controller with 256MB ECC protected cache and RAID 0 and 1
  • Upgrades include:
    • Battery-backed write cache (BBWC) for standard 256MB cache
    • 512MB ECC protected cache upgrade with BBWC
  • Optional Storage Works P700m Controller with either 256MB or 512MB cache
  • Optional StorageWorks IO Accelerator cards for high I/O performance and low latency access to storage with the reliability of solid state technology Read the rest of this entry »

The core component of a blade system is the chassis, HP’s enterprise chassis for the C-Class is the C7000.

The C7000 holds up to 16 half-height blades (or 8 full-height, or some combinations) in a 10u rack space.

In C7000 chassis, we’ve got almost all half-height blades with the exception of one full-height blade.  Blades can be mixed in a single chassis, but there’s a dangerous exception that we’ll discuss  about later.

HP does has made a smaller enclosure, the C3000, but I would highly recommend against it except for the most space-challenged shops.

The C3000 is 6u tall instead of 10u, but it only supports 8 half-height servers and 3 interconnect bays. Check out the cost comparison using retail prices:

• C7000 with 2 power supplies and 4 fans – $6,000

• C3000 with 2 power supplies and 4 fans – $4,300

The C3000 may look cheaper, but watch how the cost raise when 2 network switches are added in… after all, the blades need network connectivity:

• C7000 with power, fans and 2 Cisco 3020’s -$15,600

• C3000 with power, fans, and 2 Cisco 3020’s – $13,900

Suddenly, spending the extra $1,700 to get the capacity for 8 more blades seems like a great deal. The real cost on a blade chassis isn’t the chassis itself, but rather the network switches and SAN switches that get plugged into the back side of the cabinet. Speaking of which, let’s take a look at the back of a C7000.

Everything you see in this chassis is the back of a C7000. There’s two rows of fans (at the top and bottom of the chassis), a row of power supplies at the very bottom, and in the middle, the interconnects. This particular chassis has four network switches and two SAN switches. This will seem like a lot of interconnect equipment for just 16 servers, but we tend to only use blades for equipment that needs a lot of connectivity. Examples would be:

• Standalone SQL Server ( each blade needs 2 network ports and either 2 SAN ports or 2 iSCSI network ports depending on storage)
• Clustered SQL Server (each blade needs 3-4 network ports and 2 SAN ports)
• VMware server   (each blade needs 4 network ports and 2 SAN ports)

Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a leader in application-optimized, high-performance server solutions, is presenting its industry-leading lineup of GPU servers this week at the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference (GTC) being held at The Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. Supermicro is demonstrating the world’s fastest 1U SuperServer 6016GT-TF-TM2 (2 TeraFLOPs) along with the SuperWorkstation 7046GT-TRF-TC4, which supports four NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPUs and three additional PCI-e add-on cards for high-bandwidth I/O. The company is also unveiling a brand new 2U Twin server that supports two hot-pluggable GPU nodes with redundant power on Friday at 11am in the Cupertino Room during its presentation on advanced GPU server technology.

Colleagues are still talking about and playing with the ideas of servers/workstations with a built in GPU, and using the GPU in a grid for their risk analytics/batch systems, it’s exciting technology, we’ll have to see how they get on with it. In the meantime, I see Super Micro are talking about their servers with build in GPU technology, very cool.

Intel has unveiled a reference design as part of a new concept involving what it calls “microservers”, this week at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF). According to Sean Maloney of the Intel Architecture Group, the design is based on a new dual-core “ultra-low-voltage Intel Xeon 3000 series processor” with a TDP of just 30 watts. The chip should ship Quarter 1 of 2010, while a 45-watt quad-core version is set to come out later this year.

To get an idea of how “micro” it is, Intel says that up to 16 modules of a microserver can be put into a standard 5U enclosure. Each of these smaller servers is envisioned to be relatively cheap and consume low amounts of power.

While I do see the word “virtualization” and “cloud computing” being liberally mentioned by Intel, the less powerful microserver appears at first glance to run counter intuitive to the idea of using slightly more powerful machines to host multiple guest virtual machines.

On the other hand, this concept looks suspiciously like what we already have in terms of blade servers. Unlike blade servers though–assuming that Intel can pull off its microserver idea–we might soon be able to benefit from a blade-like server architecture without the proprietary interfaces that they currently face.

Hewlett Packard has announced two new networking switches named: HP ProCurve 6120G/XG Blade Switch (1Gbps) and the 6120XG Blade Switch (10Gbps) .

The new switches are compatible with existing HP blade server systems enclosures. The new products  will help customers to have more control over the networking and data management aspects of their data centers. The move is one step towards distinguishing itself from the competition.

Besides the new launches, HP has also added some features like Power over Ethernet (PoE) capability to its 8200 and 5400 Ethernet switch families. The switches are meant for unified communications and video-surveillance system and are fit for those who look for cost cutting solutions.