* HP intros BladeSystem architecture
HP, attempting to take blade server market share away from IBM, last week introduced a BladeSystem architecture that supports higher densities and lower costs.
The c-Class BladeSystem replaces the p-Class blades. The BladeSystem sports a new chassis, fans, power supplies and blades, as well as new management software. Because of the new chassis, the BladeSystems are not backward compatible to the p-Class blades.
HP has spent three years developing the BladeSystem c-Class. The company claims that by using it, customers can reduce operational costs and capital expenditures by 46% compared with using comparable rack-mounted systems over a three-year period.
The modular c-Class system innovates, according the HP’s claims, in three areas: virtualization, power and cooling and system management.
The blades use HP’s Virtual Connect Architecture, which lets customers cable the blades just once and manage virtualized Ethernet and Fibre Channel connections. They incorporate a midplane architecture and have 5Tbps aggregate throughput.
The new BladeSystems works with 4Gbps Brocade Fibre Channel switches and Emulex and QLogic host bus adapters, as well as with PolyServe’s software.
HP has applied thermal controls to the blades, enclosure and rack to create power and cooling efficiencies without compromising processing. The Active Cool Fan technology reduces airflow by 30% and power consumption by 50%.
Insight Control, which is used to manage the BladeSystem blades, allows an administrator to manage as many as 200 blades. An onboard management package, the HP Onboard Administrator, uses words and graphics to let customers configure, monitor, troubleshoot and repair the blades.
The c-Class blades comprise the HP ProLiant BL460c and the BL480c. Both blades according to HP have twice the memory, hot plug drives and I/O expansion capabilities of IBM’s HS20 blade.
The BL480c has the same capabilities as HP’s popular rack-mounted ProLiant DL380.
Among blade servers, IBM has a 40% market share, followed by HP with 36%, according to IDC.
The HP BladeSystem c-Class blades and enclosure are expected to be available in July, with pricing available at that time.
