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HP BladeSystem

Server blades and more to simplify your business technology infrastructure 

What's a BladeSystem?
A BladeSystem is an infrastructure in a box.

With it, you can build vital solutions to support your business that are more affordable, take less time to maintain, use less power and are ready to grow with you.

In an all-in-one design, you have the essentials to build and maintain your infrastructure from start to finish. Inside, you can host a choice from thousands of applications on Windows®, Linux, HP-UX and more. You can support a combination of virtual machines, storage and server blades—ProLiant, Integrity and StorageWorks—plus connect to a variety of the most popular networking brands and standards including Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand.

What is a blade?

HP blades range from servers and storage devices to workstations and virtual desktops.  Many of HP’s most popular products that you may be familiar with are now available in a blade design.

Each blade is inserted into the BladeSystem enclosure which provides redundancy, network connections and a more efficient, shared power and cooling design.  To help setup and maintain your blades, a variety of tools are also built-in to help you at every step.

Will bades run what I want them to?
HP BladeSystem is ready for the applications you rely on today and for those you may add in the future. BladeSystem supports two lines of HP servers blade: ProLiant and Integrity.

In most cases, any software application that is certified and supported by the operating system will run on HP BladeSystem; however, exceptions can and do exist.

• ProLiant server blades support Microsoft® Windows®, Linux OS, NetWare and Solaris.
• Integrity server blades support HP-UX, HP OpenVMS, Microsoft Windows and Linux OS.

Benefits of BladeSystem
Cost-savvy:  The consolidated design is more affordable to buy and efficient to own than conventional IT. Integrated redundancy from the start; fewer wires and other components save up to 40% less than rack-mount infrastructures

Change-ready:  HP Virtual Connect and a modular design lower barriers to change and speed growth.  Add, replace and recover resources on the fly without rewiring

Energy-thrifty:  HP Thermal Logic technology improves efficiency by managing power and cooling as a resource.  Use up to 30% less power and push less hot air into the data center

Time-smart: HP Insight Control manages an automated infrastructure to save valuable time
Increased administrator productivity, simple inventory, provisioning and recovery plus rapid patching and repairing

When should I consider a BladeSystem?
You don’t need to replace what you have in order to add blades to your IT environment.  HP BladeSystems fit in the same racks, connect to the most common networks and SANs, and you can use the same HP tools to manage your blades and other HP server and storage gear.  Good times to consider blades include:

Out-dated infrastructure: Common pain points leading to a change in your IT equipment include high support cost, unreliability, low performance, complexity, inflexibility, security, running out of room and rising electric bills.

Upgrade: As part of a common three-to-five year technology refresh cycle, could include end of a leasing agreement.

Adding or Connecting to a SAN: Because BladeSystems eliminate many of the components needed to connect to a SAN, blade servers are 50 to 64% less expensive to connect to your SAN.

Virtualisation: BladeSystems are a natural choice for virtualisation.  ProLiant server blades have all the required features for virtual machines and BladeSystems have the option to virtualise your network and external storage as part of one solution.  Now, the Insight Control management suite also includes built-in Virtual Machine Manager to simplify the maintenance of a virtual solution.

Expansion: Natural business growth or a merger and acquisition that requires additional computing, network and storage.

Strategic initiative: Can include the addition of new applications or solutions designed to improve existing equipment or to add a new service.

Consolidation: The most common strategic initiative for large companies today and most common project associated with any of the four change events listed above. Usually paired with some form of virtualisation and quickly followed with projects to raise utilisation and lower operational costs.