HBA is blade server

[avamar11]

Hi ,

I wanted to know what how the HBA's are connected in blade servers .....

Thanks ain advance ......

[Adrian Clint]

To the interconnects!

What do you mean?

[avamar11]

how many maximum HBA can be connected connected ?

[The Brit]

This depends on the type of enclosure and the type of blade. HBA's are installed in the blades on the Mezzanine Slots. If it is a full height blade, i.e. bl860c, bl870c, etc., then you will have 3 Mezz slots available on each blade.

If you have halfheight blades, i.e. bl465, etc., then you will only have 2 mezz slots available on each blade.

The maximum number of Fibre ports for each blade will be the sum of all of your ports on the hba's installed in the blade.

Now, this is important!!!

You have to understand that the paths from the blades, through the backplane, to the interconnect modules are hard wired. i.e. There is one (and only one) path from each blade hba port to the interconnect module bay, you have no control over that. To understand it better, you should study the c3000 and c7000 enclosure port mapping diagrams (I'm afraid I dont have any links to them).

It is your responsibility to ensure that you have the appropriate modules in the correct IC Bays. Note: Bay 1 in a c3000 and Bays 1 & 2 in a c7000, are reserved for Ethernet traffic. i.e. the Blade OnBoard NIC's map to these IC modules, and you cannot change that.

The Mezz slots on the blades map to IC Bays 2, 3, and 4 on a c3000 enclosure, and on a c7000 the mezz slots map to IC bays 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8.

So what you have control of is a) the placement and type of cards on the Mezz slots, and b) the placement and type of IC modules in the IC Bays.

You are quite at liberty to put FC HBA's on all of your Mezz slots and FC Modules in all of the available IC Bays (excluding Bay 1 on a 3000 and bays 1 & 2 on a 7000). This will determine how many connections you can make to the external SAN fabrics.

Hope this helps a bit,

Dave.

[Matti_Kurkela]

Each FC HBA mezzanine card has two ports.
Half-height blades can take two mezzanine cards, full-height blades can take three.

That means a total of 4 HBA ports for a half-height blade, and 6 for a full-height one.

Of course, this requires filling the appropriate interconnect slots in your blade chassis with HBA interconnects (either FC Pass-Through, FC Virtual Connect or FC Switch interconnects).

MK

[Adrian Clint]

Attached is a pdf of the wiring diagram.

Some people say that they cannot cope with dual port HBAs and "MUST" have two HBAs for redundancy.
Usually the redundancy required is to cope with possible loss of the cable connections. Which are all internal to the blades so the most unreliable bit of the connection can be discounted.

[Adrian Clint · Accepted solution]

Attached is a pdf of the wiring diagram.

Some people say that they cannot cope with dual port HBAs and "MUST" have two HBAs for redundancy.
Usually the redundancy required is to cope with possible loss of the cable connections. Which are all internal to the blades so the most unreliable bit of the connection can be discounted.


And attached this time

[avamar11]

thanks all ..i got some valuable info from all this .can some one help in comapring different blade servers from HP /IBM /SUN .

[Torsten.]

From HP point of view:

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/us/en/messaging/realstory.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

[Igor Karasik]

Out-of-box comparison between Dell, HP, and IBM blade servers TEST
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/pe_blades_outofbox_comp.pdf

Compare Blade Servers
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/migratetoibm/systems/bladecenter/compare.html
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/migratetoibm/systems/bladecenter/compare2.html