Steve Knutson’s IT Blog

Last week I got my hands on yet another HP C3000 Blade system and spent a bit of time trying out some of the features and functionality provided via the Onboard Administrator (OA). The OA is a powerful web based management interface to the c3000 and all the attached blades.

One of the nicest features is the graphical view of the devices in the enclosure. At a glance you can tell if all your power supplies are connected, how much load they are under and even view a power consumption over time. You can also view cooling fans, check the internal temperature and overall cooling performance. Unplugging one fan causes the system to rebalance the cooling and you can watch it happen via the OA.

Asset management is made easy by being able to quickly identify any device in the enclosure and view serial numbers and part numbers. This is particularly useful when managing the c3000 from a remote location. Custom asset tags can be assigned to devices allowing easy tracking in your asset managment system.

Last and certainly not least is the small LCD display used to configure the initial enclosure settings is colour coded. Insert your blades and then check the display and it will assist you with the basic configuration. The screen itself changes colour to indicate configuration issues and then tells you how to fix it e.g. iLO not configured on a device, incorrectly inserted blades or power supply failure.

Of course I like quite a few other things about blade technology including reduced cabling, savings on the power bill, nice solid design, hot swap fans and power, flexible networking options and performance, HP ICE and iLO remote console. More on that later…

Judging from the large number of search engine referrals over the past few days you may need help with configuring c3000’s. Once  you have unpacked a c3000, attached various modules and turned on the power is how do you configure the enclosure. Configuration is done via the Onboard Administrator (OA) web interface. Here are the basic steps:

• Connect the the OA/iLO port on the back of the enclosure to you LAN
• Using the small LCD console on the front of the enclosure, assign an IP address for OA
• Use a web browser to connect to the OA’s IP address assigned above (HTTPS)
• Login with username : Administrator           (the A is a capital)
• Password is attached to a paper tag on the front of the enclosure

Once you have logged, you are able to configure many aspects of the enclosure and attached blades with iLO.

See this article for a more detailed description of the c3000 OA

I have written a couple of articles about the HP c3000 Blade Enclosure in this blog which should give you an overview of the basic infrastructure, but what about the blade servers themselves? HP have a wide range of Blades that can be slotted into the c3000 or C7000 enclosures. The BL460c is a great mid-range blade that is in my opinion one of the best options in the range.

The BL460c is the blade equivalent of the DL380 rack mount server and is a good choice if comparing blade vs rack mount server offerings from HP. If storage is required then it is important to factor either a direct attached storage option or SAN when doing the comparision.

Specifications

• CPU – single or dual Intel Xeon dual or quad core CPU’s.
• RAM – up to 64GB in 8 DIMM slots
• 2 x Small Form Factor hot swap SAS or SATA drives
• 2 x mezzanine expansion slots
• 2 x 1Gbit Ethernet adapters with TOE and iSCSI support
• 1 x iLO remote management port
• occupies a single blade slot
• Supports Windows, RHEL, SuSE, Netware, Solaris, VMWare and HP Citrix Essentials for XenServer

Performance and scalability

The BL460c offers impressive scalability thanks to a large number of CPU options and an impressive RAM limit of 64GB. Mezzanine card options include single and dual headed NIC’s, 10Gbit Ethernet and Fibre Channel adapters. An SB40 direct attached storage blade can be installed to provide a further 6 small form factor SATA or SAS drives.

Virtualisation

The BL460c features an internal USB2 port which can be used to boot VMware ESXi from a USB key (download your own or purchase a key from HP) allowing the BL460c to run virtual machines in diskless configuration by using a SAN for the disk images. The BL460c is also certified to run Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix Zenserver.

Microsoft Storage Server

HP sell a Blade Storage Solution which bundles a BL460c with an SB600c storage blade and Microsoft Storage Server 2003. This solutions occupies 2 blade slots and provides up to 1.5TB of storage accessible via iSCSI.

Summing up

I have installed and managed many HP blade servers over the past few years. The BL460c is a great performer whether it is running Essential Business Server 2008, ESXi or Windows 2003 Enterprise connected to EVA SAN via Fibre Channel. It is a significant improvement on the previous generation HP Blades and I think it will remain a good work horse well into the future.

If you prefer AMD over Intel, then the BL465c is well worth a look. It is a very similar server but built around AMD technology. Lower end BL260c blades don’t support hot swap drives or the internal USB port and has a standard 1 year warranty vs the 3 year warranty that is included with the BL460c. Higher end blades are available from HP, but for most the BL460c will be offer more than enough features at a price point similar to the DL380 rack mount server.

HP BL460c World Wide Quick Specs
HP c3000 Blade Enclosure Posts on this blog