ServerWatch, Drew Robb, 6/24

When it comes to blades, there is a plethora of x86 options. In contrast, on the non-x86 side there are far fewer choices. Dell and Fujitsu don't offer any at all, for example. A range of possibilities remains, however.

HP's Non-x86 Blades
HP (NYSE:HPQ) has three servers to offer on its Integrity platform using the Intel Itanium 9100 series processor. The Integrity BL860c has up to 48 GB of memory. Pricing starts at $3,847. This two-socket, full-height blade server is designed to support mission-critical application demands for HP-UX and OpenVMS operating environments, in addition to Linux and Windows.

The Integrity BL870c is a four-socket blade that uses the high-performance HP zx2 chip set. It has up to 192 GB of memory and a starting price of $8,000.

"The HP Integrity BL860c and BL870c server blades can coexist with ProLiant server blades and StorageWorks storage blades within the HP BladeSystem c-Class enclosure," said Michael McNerney, server planning and marketing director, HP Business Critical Systems. "The BL870c is ideal for server or database consolidation, very large database applications, ERP, CRM, diverse workload application and business integration applications."

Integrity systems include features and capabilities, such as: Virtual Server Environment (VSE) software creates virtual servers that can automatically grow and shrink based on service-level objectives set for each application they host to improve server utilization in real-time. This shrinks the time involved in data center management. Serviceguard software delivers high availability and disaster recovery over long distances in physical and virtual environments.

Cache Safe Technology delivers mainframe-like availability by eliminating most cache errors. This means a single hardware malfunction in the blade compute environment should not affect the user's ability to continue using the service.

Double chip sparing technology represents a three-timesimprovement in isolating memory errors over chip kill implementations.

"With Integrity blades, users can have fewer blade servers while efficiently delivering the same mission-critical workloads," said McNerney. "This lowers the cost of operations and enables a smaller energy and space footprint."

He points out that the enclosure is a key factor in any blade purchase. While blades may be inexpensive, total costs must include the enclosure. The HP BladeSystem TCO Analysis tool is suggested as a way to gauge the costs of Integrity blades with HP BladeSystem c-Class Enclosures.

At the top of the line is the NB50000c NonStop Blade System
The HP Integrity NonStop NB50000c BladeSystem combines fault-tolerance with the NonStop operating system, which copes with the most transaction-intensive applications. It can be configured with two to 16 processors per node and up to 768 GB 48 GB per processor). This one, though, comes with a much heftier price tag -- $340,000 for a 2-processor NonStop BladeSystem. "NonStop blades are used in data centers needing 24/7 fault-tolerant availability and data integrity, and lower per-transaction cost for businesses with very high transaction volumes, such as finance, healthcare, and telecommunications," said McNerney.

The NonStop NB50000c scales from 2 to more than 4,080 CPUs (up to 8,160 cores). As a result, it is deployed globally in organizations running stock exchanges, retail payment (credit card and ATM), network applications (mobile operators), 911/public safety and electronic patient records.

Read the entire article on ServerWatch here.