Wow.  HP continues its ”blade everything” campaign from 2007 with a new offering today – HP Integrity Superdome 2 on blade servers.  Touting a message of a “Mission-Critical Converged Infrastructure” HP is combining the mission critical Superdome 2 architecture with the successful scalable blade architecture.  According to HP’s datasheet for the Integrity Superdome, “The Integrity Superdome is an ideal system to handle online transaction processing (OLTP), data mining, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, database hosting, telecom billing, human resources, financial applications, data warehousing and high-performance computing.”  In other words – it’s a mission-critical workhorse.  Previous generations of the HP Integrity Superdome required a dedicated enclosure, but with this new announcement HP will enable users to combine Superdome, Itanium and x86 servers all in the same rack. 

Superdome 2 Modular Architecture

The Chassis
The HP Superdome 2 blade will consist of a new blade chassis which will be exclusively used for the HP Superdome 2 architecture.  From what I can tell, it appears this new blade chassis will hold 12 power supplies and hold up to 8 HP Integrity Superdome 2 blade servers.  It also appears the new chassis will offer an Insight Display like the HP BladeSystem c3000 and c7000.  Based on the naming schema, I’m willing to be HP will call this the HP BladeSystem c9000 chassis once it is released in the later part of this year, but for now it’s known as the “SD2 Enclosure“.

The server
Based on the Intel Itanium 9300, the blade server name that HP has chosen is “HP CB900 i2” cell blade.  Little is known about the specs for this server, but HP has announced it will be offered in 8 and 16 socket “building blocks.”

I/O Expanders
To the mix of the scalability, HP will also offer up “I/O Expanders” that will be available for the CB900′s to access.  Traditionally, I/O Expanders provide the PCI Express slots for the servers to access.  HP’s approach of breaking out the I/O slots into a dedicated chassis provides large I/O expansion, even for blade servers.  Again, the specifics of this component have not been provided by HP, but I expect for HP to release this info when the server becomes available later this year.

The Value
Why blades?  The blade architecture that HP has built provides a modular architecture so users can build a Superdome platform once and grow it as it is needed by adding I/O and cells (blade servers.)  Looking at the bigger picture, by using the already established blade architecture, HP is able to create a “common platform” so everything from workstations to mission-critical systems can use the same design. 

Using a common platform means lower cost for HP to manufacture and faster time-to-market for future products.  Not only will the blade chassis enclosure feature common components (power supplies, etc) be the same between the x86 and Superdome 2 offerings, but there will be common networking and common management as well.

Also, by using the blade architecture, the HP Integrity Superdome 2 blades can take advantage of the  ”FlexFabric” - one of the HP Converged Infrastructure messaging that reference the flexibility of having granular control over your Ethernet and Fibre environment with components like VirtualConnect.

While I have doubts on the future of Intel’s Itanium 9300 processor, I commend HP for this Superdome 2 announcement.  It will be interesting to see how it is adopted.  Let me know what your thoughts are in the Comments section below.

In the wake of the Cisco, EMC and VMware announcement, HP today is formally announcing the HP Converged Infrastructure.  You can take a look at the full details of this design on HP’s Website, but I wanted to try and simplify:

The HP Converged Infrastrcture is comprised of four core areas:

• HP Infrastructure Operating Environment
• HP FlexFabric
• HP Virtual Resource Pools
• HP Data Center Smart Grid

According to HP, achieving the benefits of a “converged infrastructure” requires the following core attributes:

1. Virtualized pools of servers, storage, networking
2. Resiliency built into the hardware, software, and operating environment
3. Orchestration through highly automated resources to deliver an application aligned according to policies
4. Optimized to support widely changing workloads and different applications and usage models
5. Modular components built on open standards to more easily upgrade systems and scale capacity

Let’s take a peak into each of the core areas that makes up the HP Converged Infrastructure.

HP Infrastructure Operating Environment
This element of the converged infrastructure provides a shared services management engine that adapts and provisions the infrastructure.  The goal of this core area is to expedite delivery and provisioning of the datacenter’s infrastructure. 

The HP Infrastructure Operating Environment is comprised of HP Dynamics - a command center that enables you to continuously analyze and optimize your infrastructure; and HP Insight Control- HP’s existing server management software.

HP FlexFabric
HP defines this core area as  a “next-generation, highly scalable data center fabric architecture and a technology layer in the HP Converged Infrastructure.”  The goal of the HP FlexFabric is to create a highly scalable, flat network domain that enables administrators to easily provision networks as needed and on-demand to meet the virtual machines requirements. 

HP’s FlexFabric is made up of HP’s ProCurve line and their VirtualConnect technologies.  Beyond the familiar network components, the HP Procurve Data Center Connection Manager is also included as a fundamental component offering up automated network provisioning.

HP Virtual Resource Pools
This core area is designed to allow for a virtualized collection of storage, servers and networking that can be shared, repurposed and provisioned as needed.

Most of HP’s Enterprise products fit into this core area.  The HP 9000 and HP Integrity servers use HP Global Workload Managerto provision workloads; HP Proliant servers can use VMware or Microsoft’s virtualization technologies and the HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services
Platform(SVSP) enables network-based (SAN) virtualization of heterogeneous disk arrays.

HP Data Center Smart Grid
The goal of this last core area of the HP Converged Infrastructure is to “create an intelligent, energy-aware environment across IT and facilities to optimize and reduce energy use, reclaiming facility capacity and reducing energy costs.”

HP approaches this core area with a few different products.  The Proliant G6 server lines offer a “sea of sensors” that aid with the consumption of power and cooling.  HP also offers a Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD)- a container based datacenter that optimize power and cooling.    HP also uses the HP Insight Control software to manage the HP Thermal Logic technologies and control peaks and valleys of power management on servers.

Summary
In summary, HP’s Converged Infrastructure follows suit with what many other vendors are doing – taking their existing products and technologies and re-marketing them to closely align and reflect a more coherent messaging.  Only time will tell as to if this approach will be successful in growing HP’s business.