IBM E User Manual download pdf (Page 7)

Selling Features Price/Performance

• The extremely high degree of integration in the various BladeCenter chassis reduces

the need for server components, replacing numerous fans, KVM and Ethernet cables,

power supplies, external switches and other components with fewer shared hot-

swap/redundant components in the BladeCenter chassis themselves. This integration also

can greatly reduce the amount of power consumed and heat produced, relative to an

equivalent number of 1U servers—or competitive bade systems. This can significantly

reduce a data center power bill. The reduced datacenter footprint can also save on

infrastructure cost.

• BladeCenter Virtual Fabric delivers a flexible, open, connected infrastructure to help

optimize application performance. BladeCenter supports many different fabrics, including

Ethernet, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, iSCSI, and a new SAS fabric, providing an easy

transition to diskless, stateless servers. This helps centralize storage, offering boot

capability, which can dramatically reduce the likelihood of a disk outage. Dual SATA-

attached solid state drives can greatly improve drive availability.

• Blade servers communicate directly to switch modules inside the BladeCenter

Virtual Fabric via redundant Ethernet links to help increase the speed and efficiency

of data transfers across blade servers and networks. In addition, the midplanes used

in all chassis provide high-speed blade-to-blade (via high-availability firmware) and

module-to-module communications internally as well as externally. The midplane used

in the BladeCenter H and HT provides four 10Gb data channels to each blade, and

supports 4X InfiniBand (HT only) and 10Gb Ethernet high-speed switch modules.

• IBM Cool Blue technology’s web-based Power Configurator accurately predicts the

power and cooling required for specific configurations, thereby enabling realistic planning

of the correct power and cooling infrastructure. The IBM Systems Director Active

Energy Manager for x86 (formerly known as PowerExecutive) tool tracks actual power

usage, temperatures and heat emitted, and plots trends over time so you can actively

manage power and cooling with real information. Active Energy Manager also will manage

through power incidents (e.g., brownouts or supply failures.) to help users avoid outages

due to power and cooling issues. IBM’s Rear Door Heat Exchanger can help address hot

spots in the data center. Cool Blue’s Active Energy Manager also provides an industry-

unique capability to virtualize power (capping) and move it from one server to another, as

required. This capability helps maximize server usage within a restricted power envelope.

• The IBM BladeCenter family features the industry’s most energy-efficient design. The

various BladeCenter chassis use ultrahigh efficiency power supplies. Most industry-

standard servers use power supplies that are between 65-75% efficient at converting

power from AC wall current to the DC power used inside servers. BladeCenter power

modules are up to 91% efficient

. This helps save even more money, as more of the

power input you are paying for is used for processing, rather than released into the data

center as waste heat.

• BladeCenter also reduces the number of parts required to run the system. Sharing

fans, systems management, floppy devices and media means fewer parts to buy and

maintain, and fewer items that can fail and bring the solution down.

Flexibility/Durability

• Every HS/LS/JS blade server ever released by IBM is supported in BladeCenter H and

BladeCenter HT, and most are supported in every BladeCenter chassis ever released,

going back to 2002. Every switch module released by IBM is equally compatible. (Ask HP

and Dell how far back their compatibility goes.) Future blades and fabric switches are

expected to continue to be compatible with previous chassis for the foreseeable future.

• The optional Multi-Switch Interconnect Module (MSIM) installs in a high-speed switch

module bay of a BladeCenter H chassis and doubles the number of Gigabit Ethernet and

Fibre Channel connections to every blade in the chassis (up to 8 or 12 ports, depending

on the switch).

• A blade server has access to as many as 10 communication switches/bridges in a

BladeCenter H or 8 in a BladeCenter HT chassis. (Up to 4 switches in a BladeCenter or

BladeCenter T chassis.) And the switches can be Ethernet, InfiniBand, Fibre Channel,

Myrinet, or anything else designed and ServerProven for BladeCenter use. Switches,

bridges and interface cards are currently available from such vendors as Brocade, Cisco,

Intel

, Nortel/Blade Network Technologies, QLogic, Cisco and others, in addition to IBM.

• Nearly 100 vendors are offering options for the BladeCenter family.

Manageability

• IBM System Director provides powerful, intelligent solutions management for the

BladeCenter family, for rock-solid reliability. System Director exploits the hardware’s

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IBM E User Manual Page 7

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