Figure 6. Processor heat sink using fully ducted design (left) and a traditional heat sink in a 1U rack-mount server (right)
Instant Thermal Monitoring provides a real-time view of heat, power, and cooling data. The Onboard Administrator retrieves thermal information from all server blades, storage blades, and interconnect modules in the enclosure to ensure an optimal balance between cooling, acoustic levels, and power consumption. The Thermal Logic feature of the Onboard Administrator keeps fan and system power at the lowest level possible. However, if the thermal load within the enclosure increases, the Thermal Logic feature instructs the fan controllers to increase fan speeds to accommodate the additional demand. Typically, a distributed element manager queries the thermal conditions of the hardware every few minutes in a polling cycle. Onboard Administrator, on the other hand, monitors the thermal conditions on the hardware in real-time, without a delay for a polling cycle.
HP’s Thermal Logic includes sophisticated algorithms in each BladeSystem ROM, iLO, and Onboard Administrator. In combination, these algorithms minimize the power and cooling required to properly operate the HP BladeSystem environment.
Power supplies and enclosure power subsystem
Power is delivered through a pooled power backplane that ensures that the full capacity of the power supplies is available to all server blades. BladeSystem c3000 power supplies are single-phase power supplies, supporting both low-line and high-line environments. Wattage output per power supply depends on the rated alternating current (AC) input voltage. The BladeSystem c3000 Enclosure ships with two power supplies; however, up to six power supplies can be installed, depending on the AC redundancy level required and the number of devices installed in the enclosure. AC power supplies auto-switch between 100VAC and 240VAC, to provide deployment options.
The BladeSystem c3000 Enclosure houses the power supplies in the same enclosure as the server blades, storage blades, and interconnect modules (Figure 7). The power supply modules connect to a passive power backplane that distributes power to all the components in a shared manner. Moving the power supplies into the enclosure allowed HP to reduce the transmission distance for DC power distribution and to use an industry-standard 12V infrastructure for the BladeSystem c-Class. Using a 12V infrastructure allowed HP to eliminate several power-related components and improve power efficiency on the server blades and in the infrastructure. The control circuitry was stripped and put on the management board and fans.
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