Blade server upgradability C7000 m03323-B23

[serverjockey]

Hi all and thanks in advance for any help you can give.  I am not familiar with blade servers at all but have been researching them specifically the c7000 M03323-B23 because I have an opportunity to purchase one.  It contains (10) blade servers - (8) BL460c g6 w/24gb ram & (2) 72gb hdd's.  The remaining (2) are BL680C g5 blades w/32gb ram & also (2) 72gb hdd's all for a whopping $800!  I have been looking on Ebay to see if this is a good price but I can't seem to find the exact parts combination to make the determination.   From what I've read about these, they are very powerful.  Is this something I should jump on or is it too old of technology as I see there are already gen9 blades out?   Thanks in advance for all of your help!   

[Thomas Martin]

Hello,

these Blades are already retired for 6 Years. What do you want to do with these servers?

Can you tell us more about the Interconnect Modules of this C7000 Chassis? Without these modules you cannot access the servers from LAN.

Thomas

[serverjockey]

This type of server is new to me. "interconnect modules"? Could you tell
by looking at a picture? I will ask my contact tomorrow about this.
Thank you very much for the heads up.

[Thomas Martin]

Hello,

the interconnect Module are at the backside of the chassis. 2 at the top and 2 at the bottom. The two at the top are for Ethernet connections and for the two at the bottom you can decide (Ethernet or FC). You need additional cards to connect to the interconnect Bay 2,3 and 4. For Bay1 you use the onboard network cards. For interconnect Bay 2 at the top you need an ethernet mezzanine card with two ports (for example: HP NC532m Dual Port 10GbE Multifunction BL-c Adapter, its the same card as the onboard nics). This card comes in Mezzanine Slot1. For the interconnect Bays 3 + 4 you need another card for Ethernet or FC and the correspondending Modules.

You need to understand the connctions from the Blade server to the interconnect bays.

C3000 Quickspecs

Quickspecs BL460cG6

Quickspecs Flex10 Modul with Portmappings of blades

Thomas

[serverjockey]

back of c7000

[Thomas Martin]

Hello,

you have Cisco Catalyst 3020 Switches in Bay 1 + 2. Its an 1G Switch. All onboard network cards are connected to Bay 1 and 2. So you can use a Failover Teaming of the Nic Ports. You have only 2 Networkports per Blade at 1GB. You can have up to 8G Uplink Speed to your network if you combine the external ports. You need Cisco experience to configure these switches.

Cisco 3020 Quickspecs

The G6 Blades have 10G Ports onboard. They are limited to 1G with the built in 3020 Switches. With HPE 6120XG Switche you get 10G to the servers and up to 80G Uplink to your Network. 

In Bay 3 + 4 are Brocade FC Switches (4 or 8 GB). The speed is printed on the right side of the module. You have 4 SFPs per Module to attach a FC Storage System. An additional Mezzanine Card to connect to the FC Switche should be installed at the end of the Blade servers in Mezz1 Slot.

The 460G6 blades are only supported up to ESX Version 5.5 U3. The two G5 Blades ends with ESX 5.1 U3. But 24/32GB RAM is is not enough.

How many CPUs are in these Blades?

This equipment is good for testing. I have G7 Blades in my lab for testing some VMs.

Thomas

[Arthur_35]

Intresting i would say that the real value is the c7000 chassis itself. With current firmware you can hunt for G7, G8, G9 which are still good blade servers. The chassis life expetance is still many years out and with the G10 in the not too distant future which will most likely be that last traditional blade server before the next genration Synergy boxes. slowly being upgraded to With regards to what you can do. Its not going to be very much with the types of blade servers you got.