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.

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 [hpservernews.com].

Re:useable for media

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be designed for high-density, minimum use of space servers for companies, but personally, I would love to encase that puppy in a little black box and make it my media server at home.

You might, but you'd have to fit your own cooling system and PSU, as most 'blade' equipment relies on the frame it's mounted to for power and heat dispersal.

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

Embedded link

[ackthpt]

Here's an embedded link [hp.com] for those who don't care to futz with cut-n-paste.

Re:better selection of pictures here...

[ahaning]

Direct links:

For the wary...
http://www.hpservernews.com/blades/photos/HPServ er bc1100_pr_01675.jpg
http://www.hpservernews.com/blades/photos/HPServ er bc1100_pr_01694.jpg
http://www.hpservernews.com/blades/photos/HPBlad eS erverbh7800_pr_01681.jpg
http://www.hpservernews.com/blades/photos/HPBlad eS erverbh7800_pr_01689.jpg
http://www.hpservernews.com/blades/photos/Manage me ntBlade_pr_01677.jpg
http://www.hpservernews.com/blades/photos/Networ kB lade_pr_01678.jpg
http://www.hpservernews.com/blades/photos/Storag eB lade_pr_01679.jpg

For the daring...
HP Server bc1100 (front) [hpservernews.com]
HP Server bc1100 (back) [hpservernews.com]
HP Blade Server bh7800 (single) [hpservernews.com]
HP Blade Server bh7800 (rack) [hpservernews.com]
Management Blade [hpservernews.com]
Network Blade [hpservernews.com]
Storage Blade [hpservernews.com]

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.

Nothing special about this

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of other companies also making blades for compactPCI.

Motorola makes a whole line of them based on the G3 and G4 chips. Nortel uses them (running linux) for their compact VoIP solutions.

Re:disks not suitable for heavy duty applications

[farmgeek]

Well the omnicluster units can use either standard ide drives (or a lptoip drive with adapter), or they can use the drives in whatever sytem you plug them into. We had one of their reps by last week, and expect some test blades soon.

THe omniclusters can also use the pci bus as a high speed network between blades on the same bus.

Slick idea all around, and could be useful in some applications (we're going to test them as citrix servers).

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.