General inquiry re. hardware.

[The Brit]

Hi Guys,
This is just in the way of a general request for information and experiences.

In our shop we currently run our primary application on Alpha's with OpenVMS. We are about to embark on the process of migrating our stuff to Itanium, (Still with OpenVMS), and in particular we have decided to move to c-class blades.

We are doing our testing and code migration using an rx3600, however when it is time to move (~3-4 weeks) we will be installing 7 bl860's, spread between 3 c7000 enclosures (further down the road we will be adding other blades for other apps).

I/we would be really interested in hearing any comments good or otherwise, relating to the performance of the blades, (reliability, uptime, failure rates, etc). In particular, it would be nice to hear from anyone who has experience with both Alpha's and itanium blades, and can speak to the comparison. We will also be running OpenVMS clustering (obviously), with nodes split between enclosures, (and possibly even locations), so any comments about that would also be welcome.

Are there any "gottcha's" to watch out for?

Thanks in advance.

Dave

[James ~ Happy Dude]

Hello Dave,
Refer:
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/316661-0-0-0-121.html

The "WHY HP BLADES?" explains all about it.

This page also includes about the Tools, management & other technical documents.

Hope this suffice.

Regards,

[Matti_Kurkela]

About the gotchas:
Sometimes, people assume that the blade backplane can do any-to-any mapping between the I/O modules at the back of the blade chassis and the mezzanine cards (daughterboards) inserted into the blades. This is NOT true.

The mapping between the mezzanine card slots and the I/O module slots is hardwired in the backplane. The mapping seems to be designed to be as flexible as possible while avoiding SPoFs (Single Points of Failure).

For example, if you install BL860c blades into a C7000 chassis and want to use all four internal NICs, you need two LAN I/O modules.
Or if you install dual-port FibreChannel cards to your blades, you need two FC I/O modules to make both FC ports usable.

When planning your blade configuration, get the Installation Guide document of your chosen blade chassis and find the chapter titled "Mapping to interconnect ports". Use the information in the document to verify that your planned configuration is realizable before ordering the hardware.

MK

[The Brit]

thanks