• NEBS Level 3/ETSI-tested — Designed for the Network Equipment Provider
(NEP)/Service Provider (SP) environment. Also ideal for government/military, aerospace,
industrial automation/robotics, medical imaging and finance. Certified testing by
Underwriters Laboratories of the BladeCenter HT chassis is in progress; when complete, it
will be covered under a UL-certified NEBS Level 3/ETSI test report.
• Support for Carrier-Grade Linux — Several distributions are supported, include SUSE
and Red Hat.
• Reduced single points of failure — Many major components (either standard or
optionally) are hot-swappable and/or redundant. Servers and modules can be
configured for automatic failover to backups.
• Backward compatibility — Most blades, and every switch and passthru module released
by IBM for the original BladeCenter chassis since 2002, are supported in the BladeCenter
T chassis.
• Eight 30mm blade slots — These hot-swap slots are capable of supporting almost any
combination of 8 Low Voltage HC10/HS20/HS21/HS21 XM blade servers, or 7 standard-
voltage HS20/HS21/HS21 XM, LS20/LS21, and JS12/JS20/JS21 blade servers, or 4
double-wide (60mm) LS41 processor-based blade servers, or a mixture of 30mm and
60mm blades. It also supports optional 30mm Expansion Units in combination with the
blade servers, using the same blade slots. (Note: The HC10 blade is supported in a non-
NEBS environment only.) Up to five chassis can be installed in an industry-standard 42U
rack (or a telco rack), for a total of up to 40 30mm blade servers per rack.
• Four module bays for communication and I/O switches — The modules interface with
all of the blade servers in the chassis and eliminate the need for external switches or
expensive, cumbersome cabling. All connections are done internally via the midplane.
Two bays are reserved for hot-swap/redundant Gigabit Ethernet switch modules. The
other two bays support additional Gigabit Ethernet modules, or Fibre Channel,
InfiniBand and other switch modules. All modules, when in stalled in pairs, offer load
balancing and failover support. Integrated switch modules mean that no extra “U
space” is required in the rack.
• Two module bays for Management Modules — The management module provides
advanced systems management and KVM capabilities for not only the chassis itself, but
for all of the blades and other modules installed in the chassis. The Management Module
provides capabilities similar to the IBM Remote Supervisor Adapter II SlimLine used in
stand-alone System x rack and tower servers. The features of the Management Module
can be accessed either locally or remotely across a network. One module comes
standard. A second Management Module can be added for hot-swap/redundancy and
failover. The modules include a light path diagnostics panel containing LEDs that indicate
chassis status.
• Four module bays for Blower Modules — All four hot-swap/redundant blower
modules come standard with the chassis. These modules replace the need for each blade
to contain its own fans. The blowers are more energy efficient than dozens or hundreds of
smaller fans would be, and they offer many fewer points of potential failure.
• Four module bays for Power Modules — BladeCenter T ships with two 1300W high-
efficiency hot-swap/redundant DC or AC (model-specific) power modules (upgradeable
to four), capable of handling the power needs of up to four blade servers. Two additional
power modules can be installed when more than four blades are needed.
• Redundant midplane connections — Each chassis contains a midplane that connects
all blades and modules together internally. The midplane provides two physical
connections to each blade; therefore, a failure of one connector alone cannot bring down
the server.
• A Media Tray containing a CD-ROM drive, two USB 1.1 ports, and a light path
diagnostic panel — The media tray is shared by all the blades in the server. This
eliminates unnecessary parts (and reduces the number of parts than can fail). An external
floppy drive is optional.
• Long-life availability — The BladeCenter T chassis offers an extended product lifecycle
(3 years in production from date of General Availability, plus another 5 years of support).
This allows telecom Network Equipment Manufacturers (NEPs) and, Service Providers
(SPs) to standardize on a configuration for longer than traditional enterprise platforms.
Product availability for periods longer than 3 years will be handled on an individual basis.
• It is extremely important to include all infrastructure costs when comparing a
BladeCenter T solution to a competitor’s offering, not just the cost of the chassis and the
blades. The high density and level of integration of the BladeCenter T chassis can greatly
reduce the cost of the overall solution. For example, because up to five chassis will fit in a
rack, this means that up to 40 blade servers can be installed. Also, because up to four
Ethernet, Fibre Channel or other supported switches can be installed per chassis, up to 20
switches can be installed per rack without having to reserve any “U” space for the
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