BladeSystem c7000 enclosure population order

[chuckk281]

Charles had a customer question:

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I have a question from a customer today, that I’m looking for help with. 

I wonder, is there any technical reason why blade chassis should be populated from left to right?

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12810_div/12810_div.html

The link above has this information:

NOTE: Half-height servers should be populated from top and bottom from left to right from the front of the enclosure. So the first two half-height servers would be placed in bays 1 & 9 the second two half-height servers would be placed in bays 2 & 10 and so on until the enclosure is full.

NOTE: Full-height servers should be populated from left to right.

I ask this because in order to make best use of zones, I am populating full heights from the right, and half heights from the left in the same chassis.

I cannot immediately think of a technical reason why they would need to populate left to right in the enclosure.  I can only think that this would be an “efficiency” model.  Is there anything bad waiting to happen if device bays are skipped?  Or if the blades are populated from the outside to the inside?

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Reply from Monty:

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The c7000 fan rules dictate which bays are supported by each rule.  If you have either 8-fans or 10-fans, then all of the bays are supported and there is no particular order in which bays should be installed – with the exception of partner blades.

Obviously full height server blades require a partition be removed to create two adjacent full height bays.

Nothing bad happens if blade bays are skipped as long as those bays have blanks installed to ensure proper cooling for the populated bays.

There could be slight efficiency gains in cooling to keep similar size and workload servers in the same cooling zones.

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Questions or comments?

[Murali_V]

Hi,

Its good information. 

If anyone required more detailed information please refer the HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure HPGT:

This will provide step-by-step approach for configuration, Management and Monitoring:

http://h20584.www2.hp.com/hpgt/guides/select?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=3709945&prodSeriesId=1844065&lang=en&cc=us&y=0&x=0

Regards, 

Murali Mohan