HP's 'shorty' blade server takes fresh approach

Product Test and Buyer's Guide This newsletter is sponsored by Blue Coat Get the latest on Web Acceleration Tools Discover how to significantly improve document delivery times for users that are physically away from your centralized data center. A document that takes 80 minutes to delivery to a user across the globe could be delivered in three minutes with Web acceleration. Learn how your IT organization can benefit from this technology. Listen to this Webcast now. Product Test and Buyer's Guide, 10/30/07 HP's 'shorty' blade server takes fresh approach By Tom Henderson, Rand Dvorak The big question when we opened the crate containing HP's BladeSystem c3000 Enclosure was: Is this thing a blade server or is it a modular server put into a 6U rack profile? It's a bit of both.  Wireless LAN Security: A to Z From buying tips to peer discussions. From case studies to market trends. Network World's newly enhanced Wireless Security Buyer's Guide has everything you need to stay current, research technology, compare products and implement solutions - all in one convenient location. Visit the Wireless LAN Security Buyer's Guide now. With its brand-new c3000 hybrid chassis, HP has remade its now-famous tower enclosure and the server's guts into a flexible blade-enclosure format, retaining all the niceties of discrete servers but adding the flexibility of rack/blade modularity. HP's c3000 Enclosure has a horizontal blade design that can accommodate as many as four full-width c-class blade devices or eight half-width server or storage blades. Unlike HP's higher-end c7000-class blades, the c3000-family blade server is not the typical blade enclosure designed to be piled high and deep inside a network operations center. Instead, the c3000 we tested seems best suited for branch offices where it'll take up just the first six rack spaces, ostensibly sharing the rack real estate with other supporting equipment (routers, storage-area-network blocks and other network devices or appliances). The overall performance of these blades was quite good, but we have to note that HP knew our blade server tests incorporate a "green" element -- we measure the electricity required to drive these things -- and shipped low-end CPUs, thereby optimizing it for low power consumption. HP also supplied two server blades, the HP BL460c (based on a 64-bit Intel dual-core 1.6GHz Xeon 5110 CPU; this is the slowest one shipped on the blade); and the HP BL465c that uses Advanced Micro Devices' 2110 HE CPU (1.8GHz, 64-bit, dual-core, also the slowest and smallest shipped with an AMD CPU). Both server blades came with 1GB of memory and have similar serial-attached-SCSI drive connections. For more on this test, please click here.

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Contact the author: Henderson is principal researcher and Dvorak is a researcher for ExtremeLabs in Indianapolis. Henderson can be reached at thenderson@extremelabs.com. This newsletter is sponsored by Blue Coat Get the latest on Web Acceleration Tools Discover how to significantly improve document delivery times for users that are physically away from your centralized data center. A document that takes 80 minutes to delivery to a user across the globe could be delivered in three minutes with Web acceleration. Learn how your IT organization can benefit from this technology. Listen to this Webcast now. BONUS FEATURE 90% of IT Managers are leaving their company at risk for a DNS ATTACK. Get the tools and resources you need to keep your DNS healthy and secure. Run a DNSreport on your domain today - 56 critical tests run in 8 seconds. Visit www.dnsreport.com to learn more. (apply coupon NWW2007NLA for a 25% membership discount) PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today. International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: security.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007