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IBM BladeCenter S Big benefits for the small office

IBM BladeCenter S Big benefits for the small office

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Highlights

  • Integrates servers, Storage Area Network (SAN) storage, networking, input/output (I/O) and applications into a single chassis
  • Uses standard office power plugs with 100 - 240 V, so you do not need a data centre to take command of your data
  • Featuring the BladeCenter Start Now Advisor, making it easy to set up servers, SAN storage, network switches and SAN switches, all from a single console
  • Flexible modular technology integrates the latest x86 and IBM Power blade servers supporting a wide range of operating systems
  • Comes with management tools that are open and easily integrated, allowing you to focus on your business, not your IT
  • Helps build greener IT infrastructures with powerful IBM Cool Blue technology and a portfolio of products and tools to help customers plan, manage and control power and cooling.

BladeCenter S offers a broad range of storage and networking options integrated into the chassis to simplify infrastructure complexity and manageability while helping lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

The BladeCenter Office Enablement Kit is the ideal way to deploy BladeCenter S into your everyday office. The kit enables several office-friendly features such as the built-in Acoustical Module, a front locking door, 33 percent or 4U available for expansion or for your other IT and optional contaminants filter.


Product features

  • First BladeCenter chassis built specifically for the office and distributed enterprise environment
  • Start Now Advisor makes it simple to set up BladeCenter S from a single console
  • The first blade chassis to incorporate a fully redundant SAN inside the BladeCenter S
  • Open and easy management tools deliver advanced, proactive management, providing rich and broad systems management capabilities
  • Predictive Failure Analysis helps save you time and money by helping decrease unplanned downtime
  • Calibrated Vectored Cooling helps maintain the health of your system by keeping internal components cool
  • Available in the Office Enablement Kit, the ideal way to deploy BladeCenter S into the everyday office environment.

Hardware summary

  • 7U rack-optimised chassis
  • Up to six blade server bays
  • Up to 12 serial attached SCSI (SAS), nearline (NL) SAS or serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) or an intermix of the disks
  • Hot-swap and redundant switch modules supporting SAS, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and Fibre Channel (FC) options
  • Up to four hot-swap and redundant load-balancing power supply modules
  • High-availability midplane helps enable increased uptime and investment protection for future technologies.

Feature Benefits
Easy to use, space-saving 7U chassis that incorporates hot-swap disks
  • BladeCenter S can meet your IT needs with six server bays and support for the latest SAS, NL SAS or SATA disks, or an intermix of the disks
  • Highly integrated IT infrastructure helps simplify the deployment, of servers and storage
  • Comes with an easy setup flyer and the BladeCenter Start Now Advisor tool to get you up and running quickly
  • BladeCenter S uses standard office power supplies, enabling you to build your IT outside of the data centre
  • Support for the latest x86 and IBM Power blade servers allow you to create the best solution for your specific workload needs
  • Virtualisation capability allows you to ‘virtualise everything’ for a more flexible, better utilised and potentially lower cost IT infrastructure with a common management construct
  • Innovative design reduces cables by up to 80 percent compared to rack servers, helping save you installation time and on cable costs
  • Extensive compatibility with the family of BladeCenter blades, switches and ecosystem products.
Energy-efficient design
  • BladeCenter S supports a very broad portfolio of low-voltage processor options, helping enable customers to lower their power usage without sacrificing performance2
  • Because BladeCenter S uses power supplies that are as much as 90 percent efficient, much less power is wasted as heat and more power is available for the chassis and servers to use
  • Blower/fan modules in the chassis adjust to compensate for changing thermal characteristics. At the lower speeds they draw less power
  • The use of fewer and lower-power components helps enable power and cooling savings
IBM Open Fabric
  • Delivers a flexible, open, connected infrastructure to help optimise application performance
  • BladeCenter supports a wide array of fabrics including: SAS, Ethernet, FC and SCSI over IP (iSCSI)
  • Helps centralise storage, including boot capability, which can help reduce the effect of a disk outage on an application
Powerful solutions management
  • Provides intelligent systems management for rock-solid reliability
  • Exploits hardware capabilities by surfacing pertinent information about your blade server
  • Easy-to-use Deployment Wizard provides step-by-step installation instructions with automated deployment capabilities
  • Advanced Management Module provides more robust hardware running Linux® and supporting many industry-standard, open protocols
High-availability midplane
  • Provides a fault-tolerant connection from the blade server to all modular components
  • Innovative midplane design provides support for you to upgrade to new technologies and helps preserve your original investment
Hot-swap, management, switch, power supply and blower modules
  • Provides single point of control (SPOC) for managing the entire solution helping to increase system reliability and availability
  • BladeCenter S comes standard with one Advanced Management Module
  • IBM smart management capabilities can help boost administrator productivity
  • Uniquely designed Calibrated Vectored Cooling technology helps protect critical system components to help drive toward OnForever reliability
  • Supports a wide selection of integrated switching components from industry-leading vendors including, IBM System Networking (BNT), Cisco, QLogic and more
  • Optional GbE switch modules provide GbE communication between blade servers, management modules and external hardware
  • Optional FC switch modules deliver highly available cost-effective storage network, including support for IBM System Storage SAN
  • Supports up to four 950 W/1450 W auto-sensing power supplies with load-balancing and failover capabilities, providing additional reliability and protection
  • Each power supply includes a customer replaceable fan pack to help keep the power supplies running at peak performance
Advanced server management
  • Supports system availability to accurately measure planned versus unplanned outages
  • Supports capacity manager to help monitor critical server resources, identify and predict bottlenecks and recommend upgrades to prevent diminished network performance
  • Supports rack manager to conveniently configure and monitor rack components and provide health information
  • Supports software rejuvenation (Predictive failure analysis for software) to monitor performance trends of software over time, predict software aging issues and schedule servicing when required
IBM Remote Deployment Manager
  • Simplifies and automates deployment and redeployment for efficient installation and setup of your blade servers
  • Perform deployment tasks via the network that previously may have required a visit to each system, helping save your administrator valuable time
  • Supports all Wake on LAN and Pre-boot eXecution (PXE) enabled products
Light path diagnostics self-diagnosis panel
  • Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) located on the front and rear of the system provide quick and easy guide to troubleshoot your server to help provide more availability and faster system uptime
Predictive Failure Analysis
  • Helps save you time and money by decreasing unplanned downtime
  • Helps increase uptime by allowing you to receive proactive alerts and take corrective action, in some cases as much as 24 - 48 hours in advance
Three year customer replaceable unit (CRU) and on-site limited warranty
  • IBM Global Services organisation provides reliable, dedicated and skilled assistance when you need it
  • Provides peace of mind for an extended period of time.

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


IBM BladeCenter S at a glance
Form factor Rack/7U, high-availability midplane
Blade bays Up to six 1- or 2-processor and up to three 4-processor
Disk bays Up to 12 SAS, 12 NL SAS, or 12 SATA, or an intermix of the disks. Visit this link for a list of supported disks*
Media Optional DVD multi-burner accessible from each blade server
Switch modules SAS, GbE, FC switch modules available
Power supply module Up to four (hot-swap, auto-sensing and redundant 950 W/1450 W with load-balancing and failover capabilities)
Cooling modules Four hot-swap and redundant blowers standard
Systems management hardware One management module standard
I/O ports Keyboard, video, mouse, Ethernet, Universal Serial Bus (USB)
Systems management software Open and easy systems management and trial deployment tools
Predictive Failure Analysis Hard disk drives (HDDs), processors, blowers, memory
Light path diagnostics Blade server, processor, memory, power supplies, blowers, switch module, management module, HDDs and expansion card
Limited warranty Three year CRU and on-site limited warranty
External storage Support for IBM System Storage solutions (including DS and NAS family of products) and many widely adopted non-IBM storage offerings

* For a full list of supported disks, visit ibm.com/systems/info/x86servers/serverproven/compat/us/blade/8886.html (US)

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