HP Announces New BladeSystems and Cooling Capabilities

Hewlett-Packard Corp. (HP) recently announced an expanded BladeSystem portfolio that can handle larger work loads for less money. In other news, HP announced a new modular cooling system, capable of cooling two racks and integrating with systems management software.

Focal Points:

• Officials from HP recently announced its first four-socket Integrity server blade. Officials said the Integrity BL870c was designed to be more modular, with a focus on increased energy efficiency. The system can save up to 25 percent in energy costs and uses 2.5 times less space than comparable systems. In order to help IT shops use these systems, HP engineers have developed BladeSystem Solution Blocks. These are pre-configured system templates that are designed to help IT shops more rapidly implement typical server application use cases, such as Microsoft Corp. Exchange Server, Oracle Corp. E-Business Suite and IBM Corp.'s Websphere on HP Integrity.
• Officials from HP said the new BL870c blade can be used in both the BladeSystem c3000 and c7000 enclosures. In doing this, HP also allows both Integrity and Proliant servers to run in the same physical enclosure and can use a common set of management software. Officials also said the BL870c has twice the memory and processing power of its BL860c blade. The BL870c can operate on HP-UX 11i v2 and v3, Microsoft Windows, OpenVMS, as well as RedHat, Inc. and Novell, Inc. SuSE Linux-based operating systems. The BL870c blades are immediately available, with pricing starting at around $8000.
• Officials from HP recently announced the availability of its new Modular Cooling System (MCS) G2. In laboratory testing, the MCS G2 was able to contain up to 97 percent of the heat inside of the server racks it supported. The MCS G2 can be configured to cool two racks, or provide one rack with the capability of cooling up to 35 KW of heat. The MCS G2 reduces the flow of water needed to support this cooling density, and also integrates into Insight Manager to bring environmental management into the overall systems management framework.

Experton Group believes HP’s new announcement in both blade systems and environmental controls will be very well received by both enterprise and mid-size businesses. Experton Group finds that power and cooling issues are becoming a concern for IT shops of all sizes. Using the new BL870c blade in a c3000 "shorty" chassis will be a good fit for mid-size companies that still have power and space issues. In addition, integrating power information into management systems is the right direction to go, since environmental management will increasingly become an essential component of data center management. IT executives should push their vendors to more tightly integrate environmental and systems information to allow for more holistic data center management.