IBM BladeCenter S beats the competition

Competitive advantages - an IBM cost advantage over $4,000 USD

All blades are not created equal.

IBM® BladeCenter® is a highly integrated system comprising of blade servers, storage, management and networking options that help reduce management complexity, increase performance and energy-efficiency while significantly reducing costs with a highly reliable and flexible design that deters the need for “rip and replace” as capacity needs change. Top 5 reasons to choose IBM BladeCenter:

1. The widest choice of compatible chassis, blade servers, storage and networking offerings
2. Rock-solid availability with multiple layers of redundancy
3. End-to-end reliability and a commitment to best practices
4. Excellent power efficiencies with pioneering cooling technologies
5. Superior I/O performance and switches based on open technology

Is your IT environment in need of better performance and efficiencies?

The IBM BladeCenter HS23 blade server can help improve the economics of your data center with up to:

24X faster performance than older servers¹
90% reduction in energy costs alone¹
97% IT footprint reduction¹
92% fewer networking cables²
86% fewer power cables²

Evaluate your IT environment today and find out how much you can save with IBM

IBM BladeCenter: smarter systems for a smarter planet

Today’s data center environment is tougher than ever. You need to reduce IT cost and complexity. You need to manage space requirements, power consumption and heat output. And you need to do these things while increasing flexibility, utilization and manageability. So how do you manage the explosion of data and still reduce costs? IBM BladeCenter has the flexibility and reliability you need to manage the massive – and growing – amounts of data that your systems are creating without adding complexity. The innovative, open BladeCenter design offers a true alternative to today's sprawling racks and overheated server rooms. Migrate to the blade server solution that lets you do it all and reduce costs. You have nothing to lose but complexity.

Integrate:

Servers, networking, storage, & systems management
Virtually any networking standard from multiple vendors
End-to-end management
Linux®, UNIX®/IBM AIX®, IBM i and Windows®
2- and 4-socket x86 and IBM POWER® processor-based blade servers
Multiple workloads on a platform designed for virtualization

Simplify:

Management from a single point for the entire chassis
Deployment with automated provisioning tools
Qualification with scalable, flexible building blocks
Networking with Virtual Fabric and FCoE
Complexity with an open platform that fits right into your data center

Reduce:

Costs with fewer parts to buy and lower operating overhead
Power consumption with a high-efficiency system
Space with high-density blades
Cables with integrated switching
Risk with no single point of failure via multicomponent PFA and automatic recovery
Waste with a stable, proven platform that has stood the test of time

[1] Performance, energy savings and footprint reduction are based on the following comparisons.

Blade to rack:

2012 IBM BladeCenter HS23 blade server configuration: 2S 8C Intel Xeon E5-2680 / 2.7GHz
2009 HP Proliant DL380 G5 2U rack server configuration: 2S 2C Intel Xeon 5120 / 1.86GHz

Blade to blade:

2012 IBM BladeCenter HS23 blade server configuration: 2S 8C Intel Xeon E5-2680 / 2.7GHz
2008 IBM BladeCenter HS21 blade server configuration: 2S 2C Intel Xeon 5120 / 1.86GHz

Source: Intel Corp. and the IBM Systems Consolidation Evaluation Tool. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/resources/tools/sconevalltool_intel/index.html

[2] Up to 92% fewer networking cables based on calculations of: one 42U rack populated with 4 BladeCenter H chassis containing 14 blades each (56 total) supporting 12 I/O ports per blade (672 total ports) requiring a total of 64 cables per rack for 6 integrated switch modules (8 cables from the Virtual Fabric switches and 8 cables from other LAN switches times 4 chassis; the VF switches support both LAN and SAN traffic, so separate SAN cabling is unnecessary). An equivalent 56 1U rack servers populated in 2 rack enclosures supporting 14 I/O ports per server (12 LAN cables and 2 SAN cables connected to corresponding external LAN and SAN switches) requires a total of 784 cables. This does not even include the 86% reduction in cabling for power cords (16 per rack for BladeCenter H vs. 112 for 56 1U servers with redundant power), or the reduction in KVM and PDU switches and cabling.