ProLiant BL-p Class

The ProLiant BL-p class servers are the second generation of ProLiant BL server blades optimized for rapid deployment and automated provisioning. ProLiant BL-p class systems are high-performance, high availability, two- and four-processor server blades for multitiered data center architectures. Both the BL20p and BL40p blades slide into the same BL-p modular enclosure. They offer Storage Area Network (SAN) attached clustering capabilities with the optional Fibre Channel support for HP StorageWorks connectivity, and are also compatible with EMC and Hitachi SANs. In addition, with HP's fusion of SAN and Network Attached Storage (NAS), customers can design a storage architecture that incorporates application-, database-, and file-serving solution functionality.

ProLiant BL-p Enclosure

ProLiant BL-p class server blades slide into the server blade enclosure backplane for power and data connections. Each enclosure has eight server blade bays and two interconnect bays. The two interconnect bays are the outermost slots and are occupied by one of the three interconnect options: RJ-45 patch panels, the RJ-45 patch panel-2 with dual Fibre Channel passthrough, or the interconnect switch with gigabit Ethernet uplinks (available with either fiber-based 1000SX or copper -based 10/100/1000T uplink ports) for network cable reduction. The remaining eight bays can support up to eight two-processor server blades or two four-processor server blades, in any combination. Up to six server blade enclosures can fit in a 42U rack.

ProLiant BL20p Blade Server: Class 1 Basic Duty Server

The ProLiant BL 20p class blades slide in and connect into the BL-p server blade enclosure so no cables are coming from the server. The BL-p enclosure system enables dynamic scaling and protects your investment with an intelligent , modular infrastructure that can accommodate future blades. The ProLiant BL20p blade is configurable with up to two Xeon processors, up to 8GB of memory, and gigabit Network Interface Cards (NICs) standard. The optional Fibre Channel capability is enabled by a dual-port Fibre Channel Mezzanine Card (2GB) specifically designed for the ProLiant BL20p G2.

Server Classes

You might have notice the previous heading "ProLiant BL20p Blade Server: Class 1 Basic Duty Server." Using the Microsoft Systems Architecture Internet Data Center (MSA IDC) documentation as a reference, the BL-20p fulfills the class 1A basic server and class 1B requirement, and BL-40p blades fulfill the Class 2 medium-duty server requirements. ProLiant BL-p class blade servers meet or exceed the requirement to fill the following roles:

• ISA server firewall server

• Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server

• AD DC

• Application Center 2003 staging servers

• Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) server

• NetIQ AppManager management server

• Domain Name System (DNS) server

• File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server

• Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server

This definition is used to demonstrate how the BL-p series blade features meet data center server classification.

The MSA IDC documentation uses server class definitions to define and categorize server capabilities.

The ProLiant servers in this section are classified based on this documentation, which offers a well-defined , comprehensive, and structured approach to cover all aspects of building an IDC based on industry standards. (The documentation is available at the Microsoft Web site).

ProLiant BL40p Blade Server: Class 2 Medium Duty

The first four-way server blade in the ProLiant BL-p class family is the ProLiant BL40p, engineered for the back-end enterprise space. This server blade features up to four Xeon MP processors, up to 12GB max memory with online spare, Integrated Smart Array 5i plus with optional battery backed write cache, four Hot Plug SCSI drives , and two PCI “X slots for SAN connectivity.