Linux On HP Blades

HNFO writes: "HP is unveiling their new 'blade' servers that fit onto a single card. Their press release is here. They are currently available with your choice of RedHat, Debian and SuSE. A picture of the card can be found here and a picture of the chassis can be found here." If you're looking for high-density slot-based computers, earlier postings about RLX's Transmeta blades and OmniCluster's x86 variety might interest you as well.

Comments

Re:Agggh... Same image.

[InnereNacht]

I think this *should* be it: http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/blades/product s/bh7800/index.html

"The HP Blade Server bh7800 Chassis architecture incorporates network switching, storage interconnect, and space for multiple servers into a single, highly available chassis infrastructure. The horizontally scaled 38-slot, 13U-high HP Blade Server bh7800 chassis has both front and back access. It supports from 1 to 16 server blades, 1 or 2 network blades, 1 to 16 storage blades of multiple types, and an intelligent management blade."

better selection of pictures here...

[turbine216]

try this link.

My experience with a prerelease Blade

[Anonymous Coward]

My office evaluated a Blade a little while back, since we were in the market for a new build machine to replace an aging Dell PowerEdge (dual P3-400). The Blade performed very well and was rock solid running Debian 2.2r3 (upgraded to kernel 2.4.15). However, there was little to distinguish the Blade from most of its cheaper competitors, besides its easy upgradeability. We ran some benchmarks with the department next door, and their Compaq server blew the Blade out of the water, even though they both had identical CPUs. The Blade was also kind of pokey at 3-D rendering; we think the network cards that it came with were a bit underpowered. (We use a nice 3com 10/100 switch so normally, fast streaming data coming from the server flies down the pipe.)

Overall we came to the conclusion that the Blades were novel, but overpriced and underpowered, at least for our needs. But organizations who can afford to pay extra and get very little for it won't mind the Blades.

df

Management Blade

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked on the management blade. It's based around a StrongArm 110 and runs Linux 2.4. It has no hard disk and uses a RAM disk instead. Power on to prompt in 20 secs.

Re:Will heat be a problem?

[morcheeba]

This thread has 5 replies and no one has an answer yet?

On the data sheet (there's a nice link in the article, I'm sure you can find it), you'll find the specs you're looking for:
Capable of 50 Watts per slot.
Single Pentium III 700 MHz, 512 MB ECC (PC100), 30GB IDE 2.5" HD, cPCI hot swap, dual 10/100base-T.
smart temperature monitor and failsafe circuitry

So, it's just good performance, not ultra-high.

"Blade" hype

[Animats]

Single-board computers in 6U Eurocard form factors have been around for years. The new ones have turn handles, like an AT&T 5ESS switch, rather than thumbscrews, for mounting. And Compact PCI single board computers have been around for a while, too. They've been sold in small volumes for industrial automation, and overpriced for that reason, but they're not new.

Eurocard is good packaging. Industrial control, telephone COs, traffic light controllers, and Sun servers have been built that way since the 1980s.

A note on nomenclature: Eurocard is a physical packaging standard dating from 1981. Eurocards come in 3U, 6U, and 9U heights. Compact PCI generally uses 3U, VMEbus uses 3U and 6U, and Sun servers used 9U. "VMEbus" is sometimes confused with Eurocard, but there's lots of stuff in Eurocard packaging that's not VMEbus compatible. These "blade" machines are 6U Eurocard, but the signals at the back connectors are, as I understand it, network interfaces and such, not a bus.