System Bus Bandwidth for HP Blade Servers

[d_allen111]

Hi,

Does anyone here know what's the System bus bandwidth for HP Proliant BL460c & BL480c Blade servers?

I found the specs and comparison chart, but it doesn't mention about the System Bus Bandwidth.

Thank you.

DA

[Blazhev_1]

Hi

check pages 6-7-8:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01136096/c01136096.pdf?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

the different chipsets and frontside buses are noted there - 1333MHz.
Both blades have the Intel® 5000P Chipset.

[d_allen111]

Thank you! But now my boss would like for me to find out about the backplain of these Blades. is there such thing on Blades? I know that info available for Itanium servers, which I am accustomed to but not sure on the Blades.

Help.

Thanks,
DA

[Adrian Clint]

Well the backplane is just circuitboard tracks so its the bandwidth of the mezzanine card that is currently the limiting factor.

We have 10Gb NICs and the Infinband Ports can do 20Gb.

[Adrian Clint]

Thinking about it .... you need to tell your boss that its not a bus backplane .... its a connection mapping backplane.

Its basically a patch panel.

[d_allen111]

Correct me if I'm wrong, the Blade servers architecture is nothing like the stand-alone Itanium or the Proliant servers in this case, right?

Thanks,

DA

[Blazhev_1 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

the blade servers have the same architecture as the DL proliants.
you add 100 to the proliand and you get the Blade analogue, e.g.
Dl380 G5 = BL480c
DL360 G5 = BL460c
DL580 G5 = BL680c and so on...

As from the bus side, the blades differ, that there are no cables outgoing from them - network, power, iLO and so on.

The blades are plugged in a midplane, which makes the power and signal routing.

The midplane where all the blades plug-in has aggregate bandwidth up to 5 Terabits/sec with all blades installed.

More info on the midplane and the architecture of the enclosure :

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00810839/c00810839.pdf

pages 8-15 discuss the midplane and i/o architecture

[Adrian Clint]

Your boss is thinking that the backplane is some sort of processor BUS or something like a PCI bus...

As I said .... its just a patching bus. eg a Server 1 NIC port 2 is connected via the backplane to switch 2 port 1

The backplane replaces your RJ45 patch cables and SAN fibre cables between the back of the server and the switches and replaces them with circuitboard tracks.

[d_allen111]

I got it now. So, buying Blades for Virtual servers, such as for our Wintel environment isn't so bad. I supposed we will save power and produce less heat as well.

Thank you very much for your clarifications!!

DA

[Adrian Clint]

DA

Enclosed is a pdf of the backplane layout... showing which ports on which server bays connect to which port on which swicth.

I quote/install Blades as my job and its very rare to see a Blade installation now that does not involve lots of virtual server hosts.