[Suggested uses: Front-and mid-tier applications requiring high performance, enterprise-class availability and extreme flexibility and power efficiency.]
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. Incorporating IBM X-Architecture™features, the IBM® BladeCenter® HS21 blade server, combined with the various BladeCenter chassis, can help you accomplish all of these goals.
Reducing an entire server into as little as .5U of rack space does not mean trading away features and capabilities for smaller size. Each HS21 blade server offers features comparable to many 1U rack-optimized full-featured servers: The HS21 supports up to two of the latest full- performance/low-power-draw quad- and dual-coreIntel® Xeon® processors. The Xeon processors are designed with 4MB (dual-core) or 8MB (quad-core) of L2 cache, a leading-edge 1066 or 1333MHz front-side bus (FSB), and 64-bit extensions (EM64T), to help provide the computing power you require to match your business needs and growth. The HS21 supports up to 32GB of 667MHz PC2-5300 Fully Buffered ECC (Error Checking and Correcting) double data rate II (DDR2) memory in 8 DIMM slots, using the Memory and I/O Expansion Unit, with optional Chipkill™ protection, for high performance and reliability. The base HS21 is packaged into a single 30mm form factor and supports up to 16GB of memory in 4 DIMM slots.
Integrated dual Gigabit Ethernet1 controllers are standard, providing high-speed data transfers and offering TOE (TCP Offload Engine) support, load-balancingand failover capabilities. The Memory and I/O Expansion Unit provides two additional Gigabit Ethernet controllers (without TOE support). Via optional expansion cards, each blade can also connect to additional Ethernet, Myrinet, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, InfiniBand™, and other high-speed communication switches housed in the chassis. Optional 2-port Expansion Cards add additional fabrics to the HS21 server as needed. This blade is designed with power management capability to provide the maximum uptime possible for your systems. In extended thermal conditions or power brownouts, rather than shut down completely, or fail, the HS21 automatically reduces the processor frequency to maintain acceptable thermal and power levels.
All HS21 models offer impressive features at an equally impressive price, including up to two SAS hard disk drives, with RAID-0data striping or RAID-1disk mirroring support. An optional 30mm Storage and I/O Expansion Unit connects to a blade (model-dependent) to provide an additional three 2.5” SAS HDDs with hot-swapsupport, optional RAID-5with battery-backed cache, and four additional communication ports. Moreover, the HS21 is optimized for diskless operation, offering each blade server access to essentially unlimited storage capacity via Fibre Channel or iSCSI.
A single BladeCenter or BladeCenter H chassis supports up to 14 hot-swappable 30mm-wide HS21 blades in only 7U (BladeCenter) or 9U (BladeCenter H) of rack space or up to 8 hot- swappable blades in the rugged 8U BladeCenter T chassis. Plans call for supporting up to 8 HS21 NEBS-3/ETSI-compliant blades in a telecommunications environment. In addition to the blade servers, these chassis also hold up to four (BladeCenter/BladeCenter T) communication switches, or up to ten switches/bridges (BladeCenter H) internally. Not only can this save significant data center space (and therefore the cost of floor space and rack hardware) compared to 1U servers, it also consolidates switches/bridges and cables for reduced complexity and lower cabling costs, and allows clients to manage everything in the solution as one. Using a BladeCenter chassis, up to 84 HS21 servers (168 processors) can be installed in one industry-standard 42U rack but the value of BladeCenter extends far beyond high density data center environments.
