HP Blade System c-Class

HP offers an extensive range of server blades with options for half-height and full-height models. It is focusing heavily on Intel's Series 5100 processors and although it can make the 5000 processors available it only sees these as suitable for validation purposes only. HP has also standardised on SAS storage across the range as it provides the best performance. It doesn't recommend using SATA hard disks with its blades but you can install them if you wish. Build quality and design is very good with the DL460c half-height blade, for example, offering two hot-swap drive bays. The processors are mounted underneath and topped off with solid passive copper heatsinks. The storage backplane comes with an embedded Smart Array RAID controller and cache memory which can be upgraded with an optional 128MB cache module with battery backup pack. Further back are two expansion slots which are based on PCI Express technology and accept Gigabit NIC and FC cards.

Network options are particularly good as the blade has a pair of embedded Gigabit NICs which incorporates a TOE and hardware iSCSI initiators. The full height blades deliver greater storage potential with room for up to four SAS and SATA 2.5in hard disks and the storage controller delivers support for RAID0, 1, 5 and 6. Three free slots are available and support extra Gigabit and FC expansion cards. Remote management is on the cards for all HP's blades as each one also has an embedded iLO 2 chip on board. HP goes with the flow to AMD as well as it also plans to offer a comprehensive range of Opteron based server blades.

HP's Onboard Administrator provides full remote browser access to the chassis and its home page opens with a system status readout showing colour coded icons for errors and faults. A wizard is also provided to help with initial installation. An Explorer style menu makes light work of accessing the various functions and photo-realistic pictures of the chassis provide an at-a-glance view of installed components. Power control is very high on the agenda as the Onboard Administrator provides an instant readout on chassis power consumption, power available, current BTU/hr, max BTU/hr and temperatures. The total VA power draw for the entire chassis can be set from this interface and a dynamic power saving mode will attempt to run some supplies at a higher rate so that it can put others into a standby mode. Power controls extend to the blades where the processors can be controlled dynamically to limit power consumption. We also found the blade iLO management interface as easy to use as that offered by standard ProLiant servers with good access to remote control, power and diagnostics options.

HP's Insight Control Center Edition provides more in-depth management functions as the basic product includes the Systems Insight Manager tools which include enhanced browser-based remote management and monitoring. It offers high levels of information about general operations and extensive alerting facilities and can remotely access any HP blade with an Insight agent installed. You get tools to help deploy software to multiple blades and HP can supply pre-prepared disk images of a variety of operating systems. There's even more as you get tools for vulnerability and patch management, BIOS and driver version control and performance monitoring and alerting.

The Blade System c-Class is without doubt one very classy blade server with a range of sophisticated features and management facilities. One drawback is the lack of backward compatibility with previous generations of HP's blade servers but if you're new to the game then the c-Class has everything needed to run critical enterprise applications with mainframe level fault tolerance.