HP Release the new c-Class blade system
14 June, 2006
HP has announced the release of it new c-Class blade system. This is a fresh new way of using blade in the I.T industry. This has been a three year project by HP and looks to be the future for the server rooms to come.
Complete new management, cooling and networking features have been bundled into the c7000 chassis. This will address many of the problems customers have faced with the compact blade servers.
The 10U high chassis can hold up to 16 of HP's half-height multicore, dual-processor blade servers or eight full-height systems. The box also has eight interconnect bays, up to 10 fans, up to six power supplies and two administrator systems.
Options on the networking front, range from Ethernet, Fibre Channel and Infiniband.
The c7000 redundant administration consoles and a centralized cooling system called "Active Cool Fans" these cut energy consumption by up to 50 per cent and are quieter than standard fans.
Only dual Xeon-based blades Half-height BL460c or the full-height BL480c will be available at first but the range will grow. The latest tools include the Virtual Connect architecture for virtualizing I/O on-the-fly, Thermal Logic Technologies for power management and the Insight Control Data Center Edition 1.0 software package for managing a mix of Windows and Linux blades.
You can also use the c-Class chassis for StorageWorks blades enabling far greater storage capabilities.