Optimized for virtualization and database applications with maximum
memory and compute capacity in a blade
Please see the Legal Information section for important notices and information.
3.
•
Solid state drives
(SDDs) use only 2W of energy per drive, vs.
9-10W
for 2.5-inch HDDs. This is as
much as
80%
less energy than a HDD would use (with a corresponding reduction in heat output).
•
The
extremely high degree of integration
in the various BladeCenter chassis reduces the need for
server components, replacing numerous fans, KVM and Ethernet cables, power supplies, external
switches and other components with fewer
shared
hot-swap/redundant components in the
BladeCenter chassis itself. This integration also can greatly
reduce
the amount of
power
consumed
and
heat produced
, relative to an equivalent number of 1U servers. This can
significantly reduce a data center power bill. The
reduced data center footprint
can also save on
infrastructure cost.
•
The midplanes used in all chassis provide high-speed
blade-to-blade, blade-to-switch-module
and module-to-module communications
internally as well as externally. The midplanes used in
the BladeCenter H and BladeCenter HT chassis provide
four 10Gb
data channels to each blade,
and supports high-speed switch modules, including
4X InfiniBand
and
10Gb Ethernet
.
•
The various BladeCenter chassis use
ultrahigh efficiency power
supplies
. Most industry-standard
servers use power supplies that are between
70-75% efficient
at converting power from AC wall
current to the DC power used inside servers. BladeCenter power modules are up to
92% efficient
.
This helps save even more money, as more of the power input you are paying for is used for
processing, rather than released into the data center as waste heat that requires even more energy
to cool.
•
BladeCenter design also
reduces the number of parts required
to run the system. Sharing fans,
systems management, and optical media means fewer parts to buy and maintain, and fewer items
that can fail and bring the overall solution down.
Flexibility
The
HX5
has the ability to grow with your application requirements, thanks to:
•
Up to
two multi-core
Xeon processors (up to
16
cores) per HX5 blade server; up to
2
blades (
4
processors,
32
cores) per server.
•
The ability to grow from a single-wide
2-socket
server blade to a double-wide
4-socket
server
configuration, optimized for
compute-intensive workloads
with up to 4 processors/32 cores,
256GB of memory, 4 PCIe cards, 16 I/O ports, and 4 SSDs), or for
memory-intensive workloads
with up to one server blade and one MAX5 memory expansion blade (2 processors/16 cores,
320GB of memory, 4 PCIe cards, 16 I/O ports, and 4 SSDs).
•
A choice of
processor
speeds (
1.86
or
2.0GHz
), and shared L3 cache sizes (
12MB
,
18MB
, or
24MB
).
•
Up to
128GB
of system memory in
16
DIMM slots. Using
two
blade servers the HX5 can support up
to
256GB;
or up to 320GB using
one HX5
and
one MAX5
memory expansion blade.
•
Up to two internal
hot-swap
1.8
-inch
solid state drives, and access to terabytes of external storage
via the BladeCenter S chassis or
IBM System Storage
™
SAN and NAS storage devices.
SSDs
consume only 10-20% of the energy required by 2.5-inch HDDs.
•
Two
Gigabit Ethernet ports standard, plus optional
2-port
or
4-port expansion cards
or a
BladeCenter
PCI Express I/O Expansion Unit 3
. One HX5 model includes a
10Gb
expansion card
(optional in the other models).
In addition, the various
BladeCenter chassis
offer a high degree of flexibility:
•
They support configurations that are
30mm
or
60mm
wide, with a variety of I/O options, depending
on need.
•
When installed in a BladeCenter H high-speed switch bay, the optional
Multi-Switch Interconnect
Module
doubles the number of
Gigabit Ethernet
and
Fibre Channel
connections to every blade in
the chassis (up to
8
or
12
ports, depending on the blade server).
•
Xeon processor-based
HX5
blades can be used in the same chassis as Intel processor-based
HC10
,
HS12
,
HS20
,
HS21
,
HS21 XM
,
HS22
,
HS22V
, and
HS40
blades; AMD Opteron processor-
based
LS20
,
LS21, LS22
,
LS41
and
LS42
blades; IBM PowerPC
®
processor-based
JS20
,
JS21,
and
JS22 blades
; POWER6
®
processor-based
JS12
,
JS23
, and
JS43
Express
blades; POWER7
®
processor-based PS700, PS701, and PS702 blades; Cell Broadband Engine™ processor-based
QS21
;
and
IBM PowerXCell™ processor-based
QS22
blades. Depending on the blade servers
used, the various BladeCenter chassis support
Microsoft
Windows
,
Linux
, Novell
Netware
, IBM
AIX
®
and Sun
Solaris 10
operating systems in the same chassis.
•
Most HS/LS/JS/QS blade servers ever released by IBM are supported in every BladeCenter chassis
ever release
d, going back to 2002
3
. Every switch module released by IBM is equally compatible.
(Ask HP and Dell how far back
their
compatibility goes.)
•
A blade server has access to as many as
10
communication switches/bridges
in a
BladeCenter
3
Some older chassis may require power module and management module upgrades.
