The situation  

HP's c-Class BladeSystem can run HP-UX, Linux, Windows, VMware, OpenVMS and Solaris, all in the same chassis and all at the same time. With HP's leadership in virtualisation with both our offerings in HP-UX as well as with Linux, Windows and VMware capabilities all competitive marketing assertions about being the most open or versatile blade platform for virtualisation ring hollow when compared with HP.

With HP, the story doesn’t finish there...

Easier managment of Blades

HP has advanced blade chassis management by providing a turn-key on-board chassis administrator with local display – right on the chassis. This control display provides a simplified enclosure management interface – right out of the box. With the HP Onboard Administrator the customer gets a wizard for simple, fast set-up and configuration and the Onboard Administrator seamlessly integrates with HP Systems Insight Manger.

Virtual Connect Technology

HP's c-Class system offers a complete set of I/O interconnect options designed to address the full range of customer needs. HP provides pass thru connection options as well as embedded network and storage switches from leading vendors such as CISCO. But what really sets HP apart is the virtual connect technology which is designed in as part of the c-Class BladeSystem architecture.

With the virtual connect option, HP provides the ability to provide an abstraction layer between servers, storage and networks. This makes it possible to create a "pool of servers" where administrators can define server I/O connections in a way that allows them to independently manage the blade servers separate from the I/O connections.

Deploy resources easily

With an HP c-Class BladeSystem connections and configurations between server blades and the LAN and SAN can now be deployed instantly and can be just as easily migrated to another server bay the same way – all without requiring changes in the LAN or the SAN settings or requiring storage or network administrator intervention. Such a capability is unique and can literally slash days off the configuration and deployment of new servers since the HP blade servers can be pre-provisioned prior to installation.

Additionally, LAN and SAN administrators never have to be involved in future configuration changes at the server level. By eliminating the need to involve the LAN and SAN administrators server configuration management can be dramatically streamlined, thus driving down administration costs.

Performance density AND power efficiency

HP's c-Class blade system design pushes the design envelope to give the customer advantages in performance density and space utilisation while attacking the serious issues of power and cooling management. With the c-Class systems HP introduced Thermal Logic as a key capability. Thermal Logic provides a range of technologies that enable customers to more effectively manage the power and cooling capability of their powerful and dense c-Class enclosures to maximize performance of the chassis.

Each customer has as a finite capacity for power and cooling and has a unique thermal budget for their data centre. Further, most customer's don't really know what their precise budget is nor the exact impact their systems have on it. With HP's Thermal Logic, that knowledge is easy to acquire with tools provided to optimise the environment.