TECHNOLOGY FEATURE Blade Servers: Driving the standard By Lin Nease and Craig Yamasaki HP Blade Servers are a series of ■ Storage blades add new capabilities from other vendors CompactPCI-based dedicated servers ■ Ethernet switch blades and Fibre without adding a different proprietary and related peripherals that brings blade Channel arbitrated loop and switch solution and increases the chance of technology to enterprise and service blades incompatibilities. Many competitors are provider customers, and at the same time ■ Expansion I/O blades designing proprietary, ultra dense servers, enhances the offerings to telcos. These ■ Management blades but because of this density their servers servers use an extension of the are thermally limited to under-powered CompactPCI specification called In effect, using HP Blade Servers will processors and limited memory. OpenBlade, which adds a dedicated allow service providers or enterprise cus- management capability, including a port tomers to bring new levels of density, flex- The HP Blade Servers offer a third alter- for a dedicated management LAN, as ibility, serviceability, manageability, and native. By using the existing CompactPCI well as Fibre Channel support for access efficiency to their infrastructure, while standard, plus some extensions, users can to storage. The result provides great den- gaining the security and technology inno- gain the density benefit of blade servers, sity, lower power consumption, easier vation of a standards-based computing while maintaining an industry-standard management, and better performance environment. environment. Users of HP Blade Servers than previous CompactPCI-based sys- can realize a gain of twice the computing tems. The result for customers will be a Edge and enterprise customers typically resources for the same space requirements lower TCO, greater flexibility better need high performance computing and when compared against a similar volume security, and lower risk. storage services that can be accessed via of 1U servers. In addition, these users will the Internet or through an internal enter- find that their demand for power and cool- Hewlett-Packard’s launch of the blade prise network or intranet. Servers are ing is significantly less than a rack full of servers provides an important new area of expected to provide Web pages and 1U servers. growth for the technology and for the related data, as well as database access CompactPCI standard. Our servers extend and application services on demand. The The OpenBlade specification the existing CompactPCI standard, pro- traffic demands on these servers can be CompactPCI has historically addressed vide a new standards-based line of prod- quite heavy, and as Web and intranet the needs of the communications and con- ucts, and allow existing users of usage becomes more mission-critical, the trol equipment world. In this value chain, CompactPCI technologies to leverage demand for data delivery and storage equipment providers are the solution inte- their hardware investment and expertise grows accordingly. grators. They are essentially designing while growing their capabilities. Soon, we hardware out of CompactPCI suppliers’ expect to see additional vendors joining to Currently, edge, enterprise, and commer- components. create a wealth of new products meeting cial users are faced with choosing the CompactPCI standard. between 1U dedicated servers or propri- OpenBlade is a specification based on etary blade servers. The 1U dedicated CompactPCI (both present and future), but The new HP Blade Servers extend open servers are relatively inexpensive and pro- augments the specifications of Com- standards-based CompactPCI blade server vide good redundancy, can be added to the pactPCI in order to address the critical technology to new markets, including ser- data center as needed and use familiar needs of enterprise end-user customers. vice providers, corporate and enterprise technology. However, they are complex to Enterprise customers need to use blades in data centers, in addition to the more tradi- manage, consume significant amounts of a manner that is very different from equip- tional carrier-grade markets. Because of power and demand some physical access ment-provider OEM customers. the widely varying needs of these new for troubleshooting, upgrading and main- classes of users, and because of the tenance. The OpenBlade specification was de- demand for increased performance among signed to enable rapid solution develop- traditional users, HP’s Blade Servers are Some early blade server offerings could ment for customers. It is HP’s contention available to meet a wide variety of arguably make better use of floor space in that blades offer a unique new economy in requirements, and to meet several levels of the data center than 1U servers, but they system integration – an economy that can performance demands. can still be complex to manage, and have only be unleashed with an interoperable the downside of being based on propri- environment of complimentary products. Especially exciting are the new types of etary technology. This means that cus- Only after whole solutions can be built out CompactPCI blade servers that are now tomers must make the decision to buy into of interoperable blades will the promise of available. These include: a specific company for a significant blades be fulfilled. amount of their computing needs. ■ Complete Web hosting appliance Proprietary technology also limits up- However, in the enterprise computing blades grade possibilities to only those offered by world, solution integration is performed ■ General-purpose server blades their vendor. It eliminates the ability to by IT personnel or systems integrators Reprinted from CompactPCI Systems / April 2002 Copyright CompactPCI Systems who buy network computing products off- the-shelf. The demand to mix and match vendors’offerings has created the need for an extremely high level of interoperability. Ethernet equipment is an example of what a low-touch integrator or end-user cus- tomer needs in terms of interoperability, because Ethernet products of all types interoperate reliably. Likewise, if blades don’t possess a similar level of interoper- ability and ubiquity, their advantages in manageability, cost, and density will be meaningless. However, CompactPCI addresses a range of issues that are not applicable to blades. For example, the very specification CompactPCI leverages, PCI, is a standard for I/O adapters. The multitude of issues associated with I/O bus layouts and sig- naling are not central issues for blades. Rather, the central issue for blades is access to heterogeneous solutions. These solutions include server blades (known in CompactPCI as CPU blades), storage blades, network switch blades, manage- ment blades, appliance blades, and many more. Thus, OpenBlade is really about Ethernet and Fibre Channel – not PCI – to enable interoperability and ubiquity. Figure 1 OpenBlade augments CompactPCI by enabling: The changes to CompactPCI for the pro- blade, an Ethernet switch blade, and posed OpenBlade specification allow optional Fibre Channel blades. Each of ■ Interoperability akin to the Ethernet interoperability between blades meeting these blades includes all CompactPCI world that specification and today’s CompactPCI standard services, including power, signal- ■ Solution integration from commercial specification. Because this specification is ing, and network connections. In addition, building blocks, rather than OEM well-known and thoroughly debugged, it the extensions on HP Blade Servers components opens the door for new manufacturers to include Gigabit Ethernet (defined by ■ Enterprise data center capabilities create new CompactPCI/OpenBlade prod- PICMG 2.16), dual fibre channel and an such as Fibre channel and manage- ucts. The result is more flexibility and additional Ethernet management network. ment greater opportunity for both manufacturers These servers will work in existing blade ■ Strict focus on network-connected and their customers. Integrators will be enclosures with existing CompactPCI con- blades, rather than I/O adapters more likely to use OpenBlade and Com- nectors, but the extended services will not pactPCI products because they can be be available in enclosures that do not sup- The changes to the CompactPCI specifi- assured that their solutions will work and port the OpenBlade extensions. Likewise, cation required to become OpenBlade be widely supported. Customers can be existing blades will work in the HP Blade compliant are minimal. Starting from assured that they won’t be stranded by sin- Server chassis. The details of the exten- CompactPCI 2.16, OpenBlade’s manage- gle-vendor specifications that go away sions will be discussed below in the sec- ment and storage pinouts are derived from when the vendor changes its marketing tion on the OpenBlade specification. the H.110 TDM bus pin-out, but the pins plans or goes out of business. assigned to -48VDC signaling have been The HP Blade Server bc1100 (Figures 3 changed to ground. The remaining pins, The new capabilities of the OpenBlade and 4) is the initial server product and is a which are used for the two Fibre Channel specification can result in products that complete server with a processor, memory, loops and the management LAN use pre- are more useful to a broader set of cus- disk storage, and network connections viously unpopulated pins. tomers. For example, the management included. This blade is designed to mount support designed into HP’s Blade