NEBS-compliant chassis, blades run Linux
Dec 5, 2007 — by Eric Brown — from the LinuxDevices Archive — 5 views
HP announced a new BladeSystem designed for Carrier Grade Linux. The HP BladeSystem c-Class Carrier-Grade Platform is based on blades powered by dual-core Intel Xeon processors. It supports both Red Hat and HP's own carrier-grade version of Debian.
The carrer-grade BladeSystem is designed for use by wireless and wired telecom service providers and network equipment suppliers, says HP, in systems including media servers, service delivery platforms, Internet Multi-Media Systems (IMSs), and IPTV platforms. The systems are said to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x and HP's customized version of Debian GNU/Linux with HP Telco Extensions.
HP BladeSystem Carrier-Grade system
The HP BladeSystem Carrier-Grade systems are identical to existing BladeSystems, with the following additions:
- NEBS (network equipment-building system) Level 3 rack certification — said to ensure reliability in extremes of temperature and humidity, fire, earthquakes, handling, airborne contaminants, and acoustics
- Power supply — NEBS-compliant 36-72 volt direct current
- Product lifecycle — extended three-year product sales (compared to 18 months for commercial IT servers)
Like other HP BladeSystems, the systems offer features including:
- Enclosure — 16-server blade c7000-cg
- Enclosure Dimensions — 17.4 x 17.5 x 36.7 (deep) inches (442 x 445 x 933 mm)
- Enclosure weight — 450 lb. (unboxed)
- Rack size — 40 inches (1000 mm)
- Backplane — 512 x 10 GE; 2-8 GE; Fibre Channel; 2-4 custom mezzanine per blade
- Power supply — -48 V input, 12 V/2250 W output power supply accommodates full -36 V to -72 V input range
- Hot-plug SAS drives
- Simultaneous support of multiple I/O cards
- Remote management
- Ethernet and Fibre Channel Virtual Connect
- HP Virtual Connect architecture for connecting to LANs and SANs (storage-area networks)
- Processor — One or two Intel Xeon 2-socket 2.33GHz X5140 dual-core processors, 1333MHz FSB
- Memory — Fully buffered 667MHz DDR2; 8 x 16GB DIMMs
- Management — 2 x SFF SAS bays RAID 0,1
- NICs and I/O — 2 x GbE/2.5GbE mf NICs
- Mezzanine slots — 1×4; 1×8
Stated Sebastiano Tevarotto, GM of communications, media and entertainment, “HP delivers and supports a broad array of telecom software, services, and architectures.”
Availability
The HP BladeSystem Carrier-Grade Platform is set to ship in January, says HP, at the price of equivalent commercial HP BladeSystems. More specs and information can be found here.
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