IBM BladeCenter Chassis

Product Overview

CONTENTS

Product Overview 6
Selling Features 7
Key Features 15
Key Options 16
BladeCenter S Images 18
BladeCenter S Specs 19
BladeCenter E Images 20
BladeCenter E Specs 20
BladeCenter H Images 21
BladeCenter H Specs 22
BladeCenter T Images 23
BladeCenter T Specs 23
BladeCenter HT Images 25
BladeCenter HT Specs 25
Side-by-Side Comparison 26
Chassis/Module/Blade
Compatibility 28
I/
O Module Compatibility 28
Today’s data center environment is tougher than ever. You are looking to reduce IT cost,
complexity, space requirements, power consumption and heat output, while increasing
flexibility, utilization and manageability. Moving to innovative IBM® BladeCenter® as your
IT foundation can help you accomplish all of these goals.
The IBM BladeCenter family tightly integrates servers, storage, networking, I/O and
applications, allowing you to build a flexible IT infrastructure that is robust, integrated and
virtualized using common building blocks. This modular technology integrates Intel® and
AMD®, as well as IBM POWER™ or Cell Broadband Engine™ (Cell/B.E.) processor-
based blade servers, supporting many operating systems.
All BladeCenter chassis offer impressive features and an extreme degree of compatibility
with one another. For example, a single BladeCenter E or BladeCenter H chassis
supports up to 14 hot-swappable 30mm-wide blade servers in only 7U (BladeCenter E)
or 9U (BladeCenter H) of rack space, up to 8 hot-swappable blades in the rugged 8U
BladeCenter T chassis, or up to 12 in the 12U BladeCenter HT high-speed
telecommunications chassis. In addition to the blade servers, these chassis also hold up
to 4 switches (BladeCenter E/BladeCenter T), up to 10 switches/bridges (BladeCenter
H), or 8 switches/bridges (BladeCenter HT) internally. The BladeCenter S, designed for
SMB and mid-market customers, takes integration to a new level, combining up to 12 hot-
swap SAS/SATA HDDs with 6 blade servers and 4 switches. Using a BladeCenter E
chassis, up to 84 blade servers (168 processors with multiple cores per processor) can
be installed in one industry-standard 42U rack.
Not only can this degree of integration save significant data center space (and therefore
the cost of floor space and rack hardware) compared to 1U servers, but consolidating
switches/bridges and cables reduces complexity and helps lower cabling costs, and it
allows clients to manage everything in the solution as one. But the value of BladeCenter
extends far beyond high-density data center environments. For small and medium
businesses, as well as remote branch offices with significant computing needs, the
compact 7U BladeCenter S houses up to 6 30mm blades, along with 12 3.5-inch hot-
swap SAS or SATA HDDs, and 4 switches in one chassis. And the setup wizard;
BladeCenter Start Now Advisor makes it extremely easy to get started.
The various BladeCenter chassis are designed to monitor environmental conditions in the
chassis and each blade and send alerts to the administrator. Advanced standard features
help maintain system availability with increased uptime. These features include
Predictive Failure Analysis™, light path diagnostics, hot-swap redundant power
supplies and blower/fan modules with Calibrated Vectored Cooling™; IPMI 2.0
support with highly secure remote power control; text-console redirect over LAN,
and an Advanced Management Module (upgradeable with a redundant AMM).
If you need a highly manageable, power-efficient, highly compatible family of blade
enclosures, BladeCenter is the ideal choice.
Please see the Legal Information section for important notices and information. 6.