Compare Blade Servers

How does your system stack up against IBM BladeCenter?

Chassis flexibility

IBM

Your business is not generic. IBM understands that one size does not fit all. Our competition has yet to figure it out.

IBM BladeCenter S. Distributed, small office, easy to configure. IBM BladeCenter E. Best energy efficiency, best density. IBM BladeCenter H. High performance. IBM BladeCenter T. Ruggedized. IBM BladeCenter HT. Ruggedized, High Performance.

The BladeCenter® chassis forms your IT foundation and can be tailored to the different types of applications, environments and performance requirements you have in your business today. Unlike other vendors with limited chassis and options, BladeCenter has five chassis that help users of any size, type and performance level pick just the right fit. With BladeCenter, blades and switches can be seamlessly moved between chassis, giving you incredibly flexible, mix-and-match deployment choices.

HP

HP offers the BladeSystem c-Class, p-Class and its C-class carrier grade, but delivers no compatibility between these chassis. No other major blade vendor matches HP's chassis complexity and incompatibility.

Dell

Dell offers the PowerEdge 1955 and the PowerEdge M1000e, but delivers no compatibility between chassis. They have a one-size-fits-all mentality and have not delivered a chassis for small business or ruggedized environments.

Sun

Sun offers the Sun Blade 6000, Sun Blade 8000 and Netra CT900. With Sun, 2-socket and 4-socket blade servers cannot run in the same chassis. Like HP, Sun lacks compatibility and fails to understand that being able to move blades and switches between chassis can help reduce your IT cost and complexity.

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HP

HP offers Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron. Oh yeah and there's Itanium, but how long that will be around?

Dell

Dell offers only 2-socket Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron blades. Two choices, little flexibility.

Sun

Sun offers Sun SPARC, Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron. Sun boasts 10 servers in a 10U 6000-series chassis. This is far from dense. IBM BladeCenter H offers 40% better density with 14 servers in 9U and IBM BladeCenter E is twice as dense with 14 servers in 7U when you leverage a 42U rack.

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Legacy application support 

IBM

When you are debating a move to a bladed architecture, you want the greatest level of flexibility possible. Having to go back to the old server to install legacy PCI cards is inefficient. Through the innovative BladeCenter PCI Expansion Unit, IBM can support two legacy PCI-X or PCI Express cards on our standard blades so you can keep your applications inside the BladeCenter infrastructure.

HP

HP can only support PCI expansion on its c-Class blades. For their full-high blades like the BL480c and BL685c, HP requires a pass-through card which takes up an I/O slot on the blade.

Dell

Dell cannot support standard/legacy PCI cards in their blade architecture, forcing a move back to the rack or tower servers to support that function.

Sun

The Sun Blade 8000 family does not support switching inside the chassis. They only offer pass-through technologies that do not offer the same cable simplification or cable cost savings.

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Next-generation local storage 

IBM

If you want to host your image locally on the blade, use IBM's solid state drives. With up to three times the availability of traditional spinning disks, Solid state drives are so reliable they dramatically reduce the need for hot-swap hard disk drives.  ^[3] By decreasing the need for moving parts and the points of failure traditional spinning disks can introduce to your environment, IBM can help you deploy flexible and cost-effective shared storage solutions that will help improve reliability, speed scalability and reduce underutilized storage capacity. Solid state drives are available on all of our x86 blade offerings. In addition, our new HS 22 blade has a Hot swap drives as a capability.

HP

HP promotes two hard disk drives per blade as the "right" solution. Hard disk drive failures account for up to 49% of all server failures.  ^[4] Additionally, this approach does nothing to lower power consumption or improve the uptime, scalability or resiliency of the solution.

Dell

Currently Dell does not support solid state drives.

Sun

Currently Sun does not support solid state drives.

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Storage flexibility 

IBM

Building enterprise infrastructures and/or virtual infrastructures requires end-to-end reliability. Moving to shared RAID storage can help increase your data and application availability and make management easier. IBM delivers a wide range of easy-to-install, external storage products to meet your demanding business needs.

• Network attached storage (NAS) — IBM System Storage™ N series provides heterogeneous storage access—using iSCSI and Fibre Channel—to a broad range of host and client systems.
• Storage area network (SAN) — The innovative BladeCenter S and System Storage DS3000 entry storage family provides easy and affordable storage for SMB and large enterprise distributed environments running Microsoft® Windows® and Linux®. Offerings include SAS (BladeCenter S and DS3200), iSCSI (DS3300) and Fibre Channel (DS3400) host attach systems. The DS4000 mid-range storage family is designed to deliver high-bandwidth performance to Windows, Linux and AIX environments. With modular designs and models at multiple price-points, DS4000 storage systems can be used as storage add-ons or integral components of multi-tiered enterprise infrastructures.
  • iSCSI SAN — BladeCenter offers both a 1Gb hardware and a 1Gb and 10Gb software iSCSI initiator. Both support iSCSI boot. The iSCSI hardware initiator is an adapter with an embedded processor. This solution is beneficial if you don't want your server performance impacted. The iSCSI booting functionality is embedded in the blade server BIOS and enables iSCSI boot through a standard 1Gb Ethernet connection without the need for an adapter card. This is an attractive, lower-cost alternative if you're moving your storage off of the blade, and is available to BladeCenter clients at no charge. The iSCSI software initiator also enables iSCSI boot through a standard 10Gb Ethernet connection with the 10Gb adapters. HP and Dell do not offer a software iSCSI booting functionality. The IBM System Storage N series supports iSCSI server attachment.
  • Fibre Channel SAN — BladeCenter integrates the storage switches from vendors such as Brocade, Cisco and QLogic. And BladeCenter supports industry-leading Fibre Channel host bus adapters from Emulex and QLogic. These options work well with the IBM System Storage DS3000 and DS4000 series. IBM data tells us that more than 40% of BladeCenter users attach their blades to a SAN. This is likely due to the wide selection and cost savings associated with integrated Fibre.

If you're seeking local hard drives, IBM offers integrated storage as well as hot-swap hard drive options.

• Internal solid state drives — See the Next-generation local storage section.
• Internal SAS drives — For I/O-intensive workloads.
• Internal USB Flash — For OS/boot images.
• Hot-swap SAS — For RAID-5 and additional I/O with the BladeCenter Storage and I/O Expansion blade.
• Hot-swap SATA — For price/performance-optimized workloads. Available on BladeCenter S.

HP

HP has the slower and older 2Gb Fibre Channel offerings for their entry customers. IBM offers 4Gb Fibre Channel across the entire BladeCenter external storage portfolio.

HP only offers conventional hard disk drives for local storage, meaning their solution may not be designed for the highest level of reliability. Conventional hard disk drives are designed with spinning platters and mechanical moving magnetic read/write heads. These moving parts may lead to higher failure rates. IBM offers solid state drives (see above).

Dell

Does Dell understand the power of blades? We think not. Dell has a one-size-fits-all mentality. This lack of vision is also evident in their storage offerings, which are focused on rack-server interoperability and lack SAS enclosure offerings.

Sun

Sun touts their new low-cost 2500 arrays and their SAS offerings; however their new SAS offering does not work with their blade servers.

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Availability 

IBM

IBM understands that resiliency is critical when consolidating multiple servers into a single chassis. While other blade vendors talk about this concept, IBM has embraced it. BladeCenter was designed with rock-solid availability and helps better protect you against a single catastrophic fault taking down the entire system by including many redundant features. With BladeCenter you get:

• Dual power connections to each blade
• Dual I/O connections to each blade
• Dual paths through the backplane to I/O, power and KVM
• Redundant N+N power bus
• True N+N thermal solutions
• IBM light path diagnostics
• IBM First Failure Data Capture
• Open fabric manager for automatic failover

Tools like Predictive Failure Analysis®, light path diagnostics and First Failure Data Capture work together to help warn you about problems—sometimes even before they occur. That's the kind of thinking you need when everything is riding on your IT. If a problem does occur, BladeCenter Open fabric manager will automatically detect the failure and will bring up a new Blade as an option.

HP

• Single power connections to each blade
• Single I/O connections on BL460c and BL465c blades
• Single I/O paths for mezzanine slots 2 and 3 on the BL480c and BL685c
• Single paths through the backplane to I/O, power and KVM
• All power connected to a single power bus
• N+1 thermal solutions
• No light path function on the individual blades
• No comparable function to IBM First Failure Data Capture
• HP’s virtual connect only works with their proprietary hardware

Dell

• Single power connections to each blade
• Single I/O connections to each blade
• Single paths through the backplane to I/O, power and KVM
• N+1 thermal solutions
• No light path function on the individual blades
• No comparable function to IBM First Failure Data Capture

Sun

• Single power connections to each blade
• Single I/O connections to each blade
• Single paths through the backplane to I/O and power
• Non-redundant 1+1 power bus
• N+1 thermal solutions
• No light path function on the individual blades
• No comparable function to IBM First Failure Data Capture

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Light path diagnostics 

IBM

Light path diagnostics is an IBM solution designed to increase availability and speed service by illuminating small lights next to parts that need attention. This revolutionary technology helps expedite repairs and minimize downtime by quickly and clearly identifying those components that need maintenance—even without power to the blade. Just push a button and the battery will light up the problem. This is a major IBM serviceability advantage.

HP

HP Insight Display provides no "insight" if blades are removed from the chassis. There is no battery to power the lights meaning it cannot indicate a failed part on a test bench.

Dell

Similar to HP, there is no battery to power the lights meaning it cannot indicate a failed part on a test bench.

Sun

No comparable technology.

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First Failure Data Capture 

IBM

First Failure Data Capture simplifies problem determination by creating detailed event logs via the Advanced Management Module. This is especially helpful when there are cascading issues as oftentimes, problem logs can get overridden. First Failure Data Capture is designed to help you find the original event that caused the issue so corrective action can be taken.

HP

Currently, HP does not offer comparable technology.

Dell

Currently, Dell does not offer comparable technology.

Sun

Currently, Sun does not offer comparable technology.

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10 Gb Ethernet 

IBM

10 Gb Ethernet will be the common network in the near future. IBM is a leader in the blade server industry offering high performance, flexibility and choice in networking options. Whether it's full-fabric 10 Gb Ethernet from the blade server to the network or 10 Gb uplinks from the chassis to the network, IBM has offerings across the BladeCenter portfolio that let you take advantage of high-speed interconnects today.

IBM BladeCenter offers two 10Gb switch offerings.

• Nortel 10 Gb Ethernet Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter, which works with the NetXen 10 Gb Ethernet card in the BladeCenter H and HT chassis to help reduce latency.
• Nortel Layer 2/3 10 Gigabit Uplink Ethernet Switch Module, which works in any BladeCenter chassis and supports 10 Gb from the back of the chassis to the network.

HP

HP offers full-fabric 10 Gb Ethernet.

Dell

Currently, Dell does not offer full-fabric 10 Gb Ethernet adapters or switches.

Sun

The Sun Blade 8000 family does not offer full-fabric 10 Gb Ethernet switches. Sun's chassis depends on PCI Express pass-through, which is not switching.

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Integrated layer 2/7 Ethernet 

IBM

The majority of IT organizations today have Ethernet layers 2-7 in their IT environments to help deliver application and server load balancing. Today IBM is the only vendor able to provide this capability integrated into a blade chassis. In addition this switch can help deliver enhanced security, simplicity (cable reductions and central management); plus significant cost and power savings (compared to external switch alternatives). The IBM BladeCenter Nortel Layer 2-7 Gigabit Uplink Ethernet Switch Module works in any BladeCenter chassis.

HP

Currently, Hp does not offer a layer 2-7 integrated switch.

Dell

Currently, Dell does not offer a layer 2-7 integrated switch.

Sun

Currently, Sun does not offer a layer 2-7 integrated switch.

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Integrated 4X InfiniBand 

IBM

The InfiniBand® switch modules provide a high-speed, low-latency switching fabric to help build powerful clustering solutions in high-performance computing (HPC) and enterprise data centers. IBM offers a dual-port InfiniBand expansion card and a managed InfiniBand switch, which helps increase performance and speed diagnostics. IBM is also the only vendor that can bridge InfiniBand to the network or storage within the chassis.

HP

HP currently offers a dual and single-port InfiniBand expansion card and an unmanaged InfiniBand switch module. Why would you put an unmanaged switch in your enterprise?

Dell

Dell announced support for a 4X InfiniBand adapter and Cisco InfiniBand switch, but say it will not be available until the second quarter of 2008.

Sun

The Sun Blade 8000 family does not support switching inside the chassis.

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Dell

Dell does not have a comparable offering.

Sun

Sun does not have a comparable offering.

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Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) 

As technology changes continue to accelerate, clients are seeking new ways to manage the overwhelming demand for bandwidth intensive applications such as file sharing and Internet video services. The PN41 DPI Blade enables new classes of applications; delivers unprecedented visibility, service control and security of network traffic, drives cost savings and new revenue opportunities for service providers, and powers transparent deployment of enterprise applications as managed services.

HP

Currently, HP does not offer deep packet inspection in a blade format.

Dell

Currently, Dell does not offer deep packet inspection in a blade format.

Sun

Currently, Sun does not offer deep packet inspection in a blade format.

Power and cooling 

IBM has pioneered new technologies that allow our blades to generate less heat output and use less energy to cool the system than the competition in comparable configurations. Simply put, IBM BladeCenter can run cooler to potentially deliver significant cost savings in a high-density environment. In fact, Edison Group, an independent technology analysis and consulting firm, found that IBM BladeCenter H requires nearly 10 percent less power than the equivalently configured HP BladeSystem c7000.  ^[5] Extrapolated over 224 servers and with an energy cost of 9.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, this can save you up to $12,000 per year. And, the super-efficient IBM BladeCenter E chassis configured with low-power components requires more than 30 percent less power than that same HP BladeSystem c-Class configuration. With BladeCenter, you get:

• Dual power connections to each blade
• Dual paths through the backplane to power
• Redundant N+N power bus
• True N+N thermal solutions
• Solid state drive technology
• IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager™

HP

• Single power connections to each blade
• Single paths through the backplane to power
• All power connected to a single power bus
• N+1 thermal solutions
• HP Power Regulator

Dell

• Single power connections to each blade
• Single paths through the backplane to power
• N+1 thermal solutions
• No comparable power management tool.

Sun

• Single power connections to each blade
• Single paths through the backplane to I/O and power
• Non-redundant 1+1 power bus
• N+1 thermal solutions
• No comparable power management tool

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