Converged Network Blades

In late June, HP began shipping two HP ProLiant blade server models based on the latest AMD Opteron processor. The dual-socket HP ProLiant BL485c G7, which occupies half the height in the HP BladeSystem c7000 shelf, and the four-socket full-size HP ProLiant BL685c G7 use eight- or twelve-core Opteron 6100.

The first model is equipped with 16 slots for DDD3 memory modules and supports 256 GB of RAM, and the second the model has twice as many DDR3 slots, so its RAM scales up to 512 GB. Both of these blades are equipped with hot-swappable two 2.5-inch SAS / SATA drives or two solid-state SSD drives and an integrated Smart Array P410 i RAID controller with a one-gigabyte cache, for which data is stored in non-volatile flash memory when the server is powered off .

The main innovation of these blades compared to their sixth-generation predecessors is the HP NC551i FlexFabric 10-Gb Ethernet Converged Network Adapter, a dual-port converged network card integrated in the server board that provides support for both 10-gigabit Ethernet and protocols for accessing Fiber Channel storage systems over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI.

Currently, most DPCs use dedicated SAN storage to transmit storage system traffic, since a regular local gigabit Ethernet network does not have sufficient bandwidth for such large volumes of traffic, and TCP / IP does not provide traffic delivery without losing some of the packets. Typically, SANs are based on Fiber Channel technology, although the use of 10-gigabit Ethernet allows for a sufficiently high bandwidth when using iSCSI.

The FcoE protocol, recently recognized as an industry standard, allows Fiber Channel traffic to be transmitted over a 10 Gigabit Ethernet network and, as a result, use the same network infrastructure to transmit TCP / IP and Fiber Channel packets, abandoning a dedicated SAN.

Replacing LAN and SAN networks with one converged network based on 10 Gigabit Ethernet, through which there is both traffic between client computers and servers, and between servers and storage systems, gives tangible advantages - the number of cables is significantly reduced, maintenance of the data center network infrastructure is simplified and you no longer need to use Fiber Channel switches and cables, which are significantly more expensive than Ethernet equipment.

From the server’s point of view, the use of converged networks halves the number of network adapters of the machine - if earlier the server was equipped with an Ethernet adapter for LAN and a Fiber Channel adapter for SAN, now only one network adapter is needed and as a result the server configuration and its power consumption are reduced.

The NC551i also provides processing of TCP / IP traffic and iSCSI protocol, freeing up the computing power of the central server processors from performing these functions, and supports Virtual Connect Flex-10 technology, which allows you to split each 10-gigabit port into four network channels, which will be especially convenient for distribution bandwidth between different server virtual machines.

The NC551i adapter is also available in the form of a mezzanine card, which can be installed in the previously released sixth and seventh generation ProLiant BL blades.

UPD: photo of the insides