Figure 1. HP StorageWorks SB40c storage blade
Purpose of the provisioning server blade
The main purpose of the provisioning server blade is to provide the following service(s):
•Installation and deployment of applications to easily facilitate the management of your network in today’s environment with the least amount of effort
•Automate provisioning of service/application/management updates using HP ProLiant Essentials Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP) on Industry Standard HP ProLiant servers
•Reduce the number of errors that may occur during manual installation or deployment processes
•Provide for the capture and storage of the newly deployed server’s configuration
•Provide DHCP/PXE/Database/File server (depending on your existing infrastructure)
The server blade may or may not provide a DHCP/PXE/Database/File server infrastructure for the HP BladeSystem enclosure, depending on your existing network. These services may already exist within your infrastructure, in which case the provisioning server blade would rely on their services. This server blade specification does not address the scaling out of any of these services onto multiple server blades. These services can be consolidated onto a single server blade or deployed on other servers or server blades and turned off on the provisioning server blade. This specification is an example of consolidating these services and, as such, does not focus on hosting any one of these services for larger deployment scenarios where isolating a service for performance reasons would be required.
If any one of these services’ CPU, memory or disk requirements exceeds the capacity of the provisioning server blade configuration, then the service should be dedicated to a server that can meet and exceed those requirements. HP recommends a proof of concept deployment to determine exact solution and deployment details to meet the specific business need.
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