Not long ago it was reported that IBM was having a promotion to receive a free blade enclosure if you are a first time customer and the chassis in question is eligible. Details can be found in the following links:

Link to blog post about IBM offer
Link to actual IBM offer

More recently we posted info that HP was offering something very similar. The main difference was that HP’s promotion requires that you purchase some hardware to get the free enclosure.

Link to HP promotion

Since I’m a HP blades customer and I’ve been planning on adding some additional blade servers soon I thought I’d better follow up and get details on the whole deal. What I found out was a bit disappointing.

Basically the blades you have to buy in order to get a “free” enclosure are pre-configured and you cannot customize them when you order. Specifically, they are DL460 G7’s and only have a single processor (Intel® Xeon® X5675 (3.06GHz/6-core/12MB/95W, DDR3-1333) with 12GB of RAM and no HDD. If you don’t like that configuration you’ll need to buy the additional or replacement parts separately and install them yourself. That may not be a deal breaker but still a bit annoying that the configuration is so rigid.

The enclosure, on the other hand, was configured better than I expected. There are no  interconnect modules (naturally) but the c7000 chassis comes with 6 power supplies, 10 Fans, 16 ICE Licenses and is setup for single-phase power (6 power cords out the back). The chassis configuration, such as it is, is also not configurable so if you use three phase power or direct DC current then you’ll be changing out the power connector or adjusting your circuits to match.

It’s a shame that the configurations are not adjustable and I’m unsure whether the cost savings will be worth the hassle of mix-matching parts to get the configuration I actually want. I don’t have any pricing yet but once I find out the general difference between buying the blades and chassis separately through my own channels versus the special promotion I’ll let you know if it’s a deal worth looking into.

Till next time,
Chris Fricke

Chris is a contributor and author for BladesMadeSimple.com and in his day job is a Systems Architect for Clackamas County in Oregon and an HP customer.  The opinions expressed in his writings do not ncessarily reflect those of BladesMadeSimple or Chris’ employer.  Follow Chris on Twitter @sysgeekguy.