BladeCenter HT

February 13, 2007 — Introducing the newest next-generation network (NGN) platform in the evolution of the IBM BladeCenter® family: BladeCenter HT. This powerful chassis is designed to support end-to-end NGN infrastructure applications that span the transport, control and services planes of the telecommunications network. Applications include Internet protocol TV (IPTV), video on demand (VoD), IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) and advanced security.

IBM BladeCenter HT solutions, Feb 2007 (494 KB)

IBM BladeCenter HT: Leveraging the best of IT and telecommunications for NGNs (1.68 MB)

BladeCenter HT is designed to deliver the outstanding performance, throughput, bandwidth and flexibility required by telecoms to successfully deploy emerging IP-based services, while helping to reduce network infrastructure costs. BladeCenter HT can help you achieve:

	Outstanding performance and throughput
	Multi-terabit networking and increased flexibility
	Fifty percent in-chassis capacity increase and extreme scalability
	Fast and reliable access to large volumes of online data
	Potential significant reduction in capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) costs

BladeCenter HT helps deliver outstanding performance and throughput up to ten times faster than typical 1x equipment installed today for transport and control plane applications, such as home location register (HLR), home subscriber server (HSS), session border control, and signaling, wireless and media gateways.

• Performance. Dual and quad-core processors, a new, high-speed 10-gigabits-per-second (10Gbps) backplane fabric and a special-purpose 4x1 Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) carrier blade facilitate high-speed switching and I/O. Together, these components can deliver a high-performance, responsive platform for NGN implementations.
• High I/O bandwidth. BladeCenter HT supports multi-terabit networking through a 10 Gb backplane fabric. A combination of up to 12 blades provides 40 Gbps throughput per blade, helping to deliver very high I/O bandwidth and performance for your NGN network and applications.
• Interconnectivity. Strict adherence to open standards enables BladeCenter HT to use a variety of high-speed and I/O interfaces, providing support for multiple protocols (including OC1, OC3, asynchronous transfer mode [ATM], gigabit Ethernet [GiGE], Signaling System 7 [SS7], U.S. T1 line or European E1 equivalent [T1/E1] and J1) and multiple physical connections. This gives telecoms greater flexibility and choice when developing and building new application services.
• Low latency. BladeCenter HT supports the Nortel 10 Gb Ethernet switch that has a fully nonblocking architecture. The Nortel switch enables BladeCenter HT to maintain high throughput and low latency to eliminate packet loss, thereby increasing network reliability. Additionally, BladeCenter HT supports the HS21 Intel® processor-based blade servers featuring fully buffered dual inline memory modules (DIMMs) and the new LS21/41 AMD Opteron processor-based blade servers integrating low-latency memory subsystems. The combination of the Nortel switch, HS21 and LS21/41 helps enable faster transmission of data. As a result, BladeCenter HT can help lower packet loss, while helping to facilitate high-speed throughput and higher levels of bandwidth for enhanced reliability and applications, such as video streaming.

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When building and deploying emerging NGN applications — such as IPTV, IMS and advanced security — SPs can take advantage of the new BladeCenter HT chassis design, blade server technology and transport plane solutions developed specifically for BladeCenter. Together, the BladeCenter technology, coupled with offerings available from our industry partners, enables equipment manufacturers and SPs to take full advantage of the following capabilities:

• Very high I/O bandwidth. BladeCenter HT's architecture can help to greatly increase network performance by supporting multi-terabit networking, using a 10 Gbps backplane fabric and 40 Gbps throughput per blade server, all in a dense chassis that accommodates up to 12 blades.
• Wide variety of protocols. BladeCenter HT supports flexible interconnectivity for many protocols, including OC1, OC3, ATM, GiGE, SS7, T1/E1, J1 and multiple physical connections. This allows blades to be plugged directly into the backplane, easing integration of the BladeCenter platform into existing network infrastructures.
• Openness. We've opened many portions of the design specifications for BladeCenter, allowing third parties to easily design compatible blade products. Blade.org and the BladeCenter Alliance Program enable many NGN ecosystem partners to develop optimal solutions for supporting transport and control plane applications.

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BladeCenter HT provides increased in-chassis capacity, providing headroom and growth for control and transport plane applications, while helping to deliver significant space and environmental savings.

• Expandability and growth. BladeCenter HT provides a combination of up to 12 blades in a 12U chassis, enabling increased scalability and headroom for NGN applications.

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BladeCenter HT provides equipment manufacturers and SPs with many cost-effective storage platforms that deliver enhanced performance, throughput and scalability.

• Improved storage performance. IBM System Storage™ DS3000 series is designed to support telecom control and service plane applications, such as IPTV, IMS, advanced security, HLR and HSS applications. DS3000 series technology supports SAS storage and 4 Gbps fibre channel. IBM System Storage DS4700 technology delivers up to 1550-megabits-per-second (Mbps) throughput.
• Increased scalability. BladeCenter HT supports up to 14 terabytes (TB) of external storage (through EXP3000), making it an excellent choice for NGN applications that require large amounts of online storage, such as IPTV. IBM System Storage DS4700 technology supports an even greater storage capacity for NGN networks and applications with up to 56 TB external storage.
• Reliable and infrastructure ready. The IBM System Storage DS3000 portfolio and DS4700 platforms support DC power and are 20-inches deep or less, enabling easier integration and deployment in central offices and carrier grade environments.

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The efficient design and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) architecture of BladeCenter HT can help to significantly lower costs for deploying NGN services.

• Architecture. The design of BladeCenter HT includes a 12U chassis with increased airflow from front to rear on a single plane. It also implements highly-efficient power supplies. These features enable improved system cooling and significant reductions in power consumption, resulting in reduced operational costs.
• Lower power requirements. IBM's Intel processor-based, low voltage (LV) HS21 and new power efficient AMD LS21/41 processor-based blade servers are specifically designed for telecom power-sensitive environments and maintain similar strong performance gains of the higher wattage blades. As a result, SPs can gain better performance per watt than ever before.^*
• COTS strategy. By basing BladeCenter HT on open standards and COTS components, CAPEX and OPEX costs are kept under control.

Certified testing by Underwriters Laboratories of the BladeCenter HT chassis is in progress, and when complete the BladeCenter HT chassis will be covered under a UL certified NEBS Level 3/ETSI test report, which will be available for review with customers.

IBM leads the telecom blade market through vision and innovation. Today, we are accelerating NGN convergence by harnessing the best of IT and telecom.

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* Some machines are designed with a power management capability to provide customers with the maximum uptime possible for their systems. In extended thermal conditions, rather than shutdown completely, or fail, these machines automatically reduces the frequency of the processor to maintain acceptable thermal levels.