November 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Preview: Early peek at the HP c3000 - Part 2
Please note that this article has been updated to correct some information
Welcome to part two of our exploration of the HP c3000 Blade System. If you need a recap, part 1 is here.
Last time we looked at the front of the system that can host up to eight half-size blades but can mount also larger blades, up to four, after removing the center divider.
The back of the unit has room for up to six power supply modules, six fans and four switches, but while I had all six fan slots filled, only 1 switch and 4 power supplies were installed on my system.
Those six fans are noisy, especially at power on. However, after a few seconds of much louder noise the system quiets down to the point where its humming is indistinguishable from the racket of other machines in my lab. Nevertheless, this is not a system that I would install in an open space office nor close to my desk. It should live behind a closed door either in a computer room or in a wiring closet.
The power supply modules of the c3000 can be configured for maximum resilience and optimal use of energy. To do that you use the browser- based client of the Onboard Manager, one of the administrative tools of the system, where you can find intuitive steps to adjust the behavior of the power supply to your preference. I also liked Dynamic Power, in essence an option to optimize the energy used consolidating the supply on fewer modules.
If keeping the energy cost under control is a concern, Onboard Manager includes an applet that reports several metrics of power usage. For example, the average, minimum and peek watts used by the system over time.
Speaking of administrative tools, the c3000 ships with a small built-in console that slides out of the Administrator Module on the front of the unit.
After you pull it out, the console opens like a clam to reveal a small LCD display and a Spartan set of navigation keys.
Installing the c3000 on the lowest shelf as I did makes using the built-in console very uncomfortable. However, after setting the IP address of the Administrator Module all other configuration settings can be done, more comfortably, from Onboard Administrator.
Interestingly, the browser client offers also a perfectly working replica of the built-in console, in case you really want to use that interface. 
You shouldn't and you don't need to, because Onboard Administrator covers all what the built-in console can do and more. For example, you can manage multiple blade systems from the same screen.
The c3000 doesn't ship with a KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) module, so without one access to each server's console is either via remote connectivity or using a dongle that plugs into a dedicated server port and has USB connections for mouse and keyboard, plus a VGA and a serial port.
The dongle can be hot plugged into any server, but gets in the way of the on-board display when connected to the first server on the bottom left. In alternative, one of the USB ports can be used to connect a USB drive to a server.
To sum up my first impressions after this second peek at the c3000, I like the management tools, not sure that saving money on a KVM is such a good idea, and can only give thumbs up to the environmental features of the system.
Although it was not installed on my system, an optional KVM module is available and mounts in one of the empty slots in the back of the unit, just above the left bank of power supply modules.
Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more. In future reports we'll focus on how the c3000 behave when we make it work.
Posted by Mario Apicella on November 23, 2007 03:07 AM
November 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Previews: Early peek at the HP c3000 - Part 1
A clear sign of technological obsolescence is the form factor of a product. Disk drives for example have moved from massive packs such as the IBM 3330 (a relic of the mainframe era, if you are too young to remember) to today's one inch drives.
Servers is another area where all the size reduction rage is today, and the transition from traditional, individual rack-mounted units to blade systems is already happening.
One of the latest additions to the blade systems space comes from HP with the Proliant c3000 Blade System, a 6U box that, similarly to the SUN Blade 6000, targets small and medium businesses. IBM is also expected to come up with a blade system in that space, if they haven't already.
I have in my lab a c3000 for evaluation, and after spending some time getting acquainted with it I have realized that there are so many aspects to consider in a blade system that would be difficult to squeeze them all in a single article.
So, I am going to run a few preliminary, ice-breaking pieces, to describe essentially the architecture and the hardware components mounted in my system.
Feel free to let me know if you have questions or suggestions: I'll certainly answer the questions, and will do my best to accommodate the suggestions. Let's get started.
Here is Shoooorty!
Why Shorty? Because that's the nickname the HP folks pinned on the system. With that out of the way, this c3000 hosts 2 servers, an All-in-One storage system with 6 drives, a tape unit, a DVD reader and other components that are not visible in that photo.
Can you recognize all the parts I mentioned in the photo? let me clarify one more thing before we go into more details. One top section on the left and two on the right are empty (and filled with blanks). In that space we could mount more servers and/or more storage.
Compare that to the HP Proliant ML370, for example, a device that occupies 5U, just a notch less than the c3000, with only one server.
All drives, both the two in each server and the six units in the All-in-One storage are 2.5", SAS drives. The two in the server shown below spin at 10K RPM and have a capacity of 72GB. Obviously capacity and other drive characteristics can vary.
The servers mounted on the blade system can connect to external iSCSI or FC storage using connectivity slots that are in the back of the c3000.
You may have noticed that all components beside the DVD have the same size. Those components can also be moved around to a different slot without affecting their functionality, although there are some rules to follow. More on this later.
Here you have an interesting comparison: Pulling out the blade and laying it on top of a 1U server, a Dell Poweredge 1850 in this case, the blade covers perhaps just one third of area occupied by the 1850.
Can you update a server blade? Removing the cover reveals some of the internal parts of the server, where 2 processors slots and two memory banks are easy to identify. Other circuitry include components such as a video card, NIC etc, but it's not so easy to discern each of them.
To answer the update question. This server, (its full name by the way is HP Proliant BL465c Server Blade) has room for one more processor and only 2 of its 8 memory slots are filled. However, we can't mount more than two disk drives.
The back of the blade doesn't reveal much but it's worth noticing this odd looking connector because it plugs into the backbone of the c3000 and is the main path to exchange data with other blades and with the world outside the blade system.
Curious to know how that works? Very well, but we'll save that for another chapter. Stay tuned.
Posted by Mario Apicella on November 5, 2007 03:00 AM