We received a configuration from HP consisting of the c3000 chassis (with licenses, $4,300), one BL465c G1 server blade, GbE2c Ethernet Blade Switch ($1,400), BL460c G1 server blade, SB600c Storage Server Blade (with an incumbent SB600c separate storage blade) and an HP StorageWorks Ultrium 448c Tape Blade ($2,000), HP StorageWorks 1.16TB Storage Blade (serial-attached SCSI drives, $9,970).
The c3000 blade enclosure arrived with four power supplies, each 120V (240V split-phase or other international supplies and chassis are available).
We tested power consumption and were able to corroborate HP’s Onboard Administrator software’s measurement of the blades sent, checking the figures it reported against our power-consumption test jig; variances were within 2%.
We also tested the administrator’s ability to shut down the blades when temperature levels were exceeded (blanket test).
We removed and disabled the server blades in various ways to monitor the ability of iLO2 and Onboard Administrator to detect problems, recover and send warning messages.
We also tested the StorageWorks 600c blade subsystem, using it as a Windows network-attached-storage device, as well as an iSCSI target; it performed well. We performed bulk file copies, and used the iSCSI target capability to format a partition and use it as an active virtual drive for several servers and clients.
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