Blade Centers

Note: If you are considering blade based solutions, please contact NIS via a HEAT call for details about the appropriate network design, since you must ensure that the design complies with the ITS architecture for Blade Centers

Blade Centers offer the ability to consolidate traditional standalone hardware onto blades, while minimizing the cost of acquisition, management and maintenance of servers. Thus continuing to deliver the same level of business benefit without compromise. Some of the benefits they provide are:

• Lowering the rack space requirements
• Provide easier manageability
• Reduced external cabling
• Pay as you grow
• Provide Ethernet & SAN connectivity through internal modules
• High availability and resiliency
• Scalability

Given these benefits, data centers as we know it will be changing, with an increased need to integrate with the network to provide a Highly Available (HA) environment for Server and Application owners. To this end, ITS Network Infrastructure Services (NIS) will support the provisioning of HP (c-class and p-class) Blade Centers. This consists of:

• Integrating the Blade Centers with the existing data infrastructure, only at the ITS Data Centers and Faculty server rooms.
• Integrating Blade Centers with the existing SAN infrastructure, which at this stage is only available at the ITS Data Centers.
• Providing a high availability data environment which is resilient at all levels.
• Access to a robust high speed resilient SAN switching environment, allowing efficient data transfer for access to storage devices (tapes, disks etc).

Importantly, when looking to deploy a Blade based solution, make sure that:

• The choice of Ethernet Switch and SAN modules are compatible with the existing network infrastructure.
• What is deployed sits well with ITS network design principles, guidelines, and is configured appropriately, including the use of dual network connections.
• All parties are aware of where the lines of demarcation and responsibility lie as far as ongoing support is concerned.  That is, NIS will support the Ethernet Switch and SAN modules, while the Faculty or Department supports the Blade Center as a whole and Blade Servers themselves.

Diagram of Blade Center Architecture