It occurred to me that I created a reference chart for showing what blade server options are available in the market (“Blade Server Comparison – 2018“) but I’ve never listed the options for blade server chassis. In this post, I’ll provide you with overviews of blade chassis from Cisco, Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo. One of the things I’m not going to do is try and give Pro’s and Con’s for each chassis. The reason is quite obvious if you have read this blog before, but in a nutshell, I work for Dell EMC, so I’m not going to promote or bash any vendor. My goal is to simplify each vendor’s offerings and give you one place to get an overview of each blade chassis in the market.
Cisco UCS 5108 Chassis
Released on April 19, 2009, the Cisco UCS 5108 has hosted 5 generations of UCS B-series blade servers. The chassis is 6 rack units high (6U) and can host up to 8 blade servers. The rear of the chassis has 8 fans, 4 power supplies and 2 bays that support Fabric Extender (FEX) modules [per @UCS_Dave, these modules are also known as IOM’s, or IO Modules – thanks, Dave!]. Fabric Extenders take the ports on the UCS B-Series blade servers and extend them to a Fabric Interconnect (FI), not shown below. The blade servers communicate and are managed via the Fabric Interconnect therefore the UCS 5108 does not require any switches or management modules inside the chassis. The chassis supports up to 4 x 2500W power supplies.
- Height: 6U
- Max # of Servers Supported per chassis: 8
- Max # of Servers Supported per 42U Rack: 56
- Max # of Redundant I/O Bays: 2
- Max # of Power Supplies: 4
- Max Wattage / Power Supply: 2500W
For more information, visit https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/servers-unified-computing/ucs-b-series-blade-servers/spec_sheet_c17-644224.pdf
Dell EMC PowerEdge MX7000
The PowerEdge MX7000 from Dell EMC began shipping September 12th, 2018 and is the newest chassis offering on the market. This chassis is 7U high, 32″ deep and can host up to 8 servers and/or storage blades. The rear of the chassis supports 3 redundant fabrics: Fabrics A and B are networking specific while Fabric C is a storage only fabric. The I/O modules in each fabric maps to a mezzanine card on each blade server, so both an I/O specific mezzanine card and a corresponding I/O module is required in order for the fabric to be functional. The PowerEdge MX7000 offers an industry-unique design on Fabrics A and B that provides the mezzanine card with direct point-to-point connectivity to the I/O module (no midplane is used.) The MX7000 chassis supports up to 6 x 3000W power supplies.
- Height: 7U
- Max # of Servers Supported per chassis: 8
- Max # of Servers Supported per 42U Rack: 48
- Max # of Redundant I/O Bays: 3
- Max # of Power Supplies: 6
- Max Wattage / Power Supply: 3000W
For more details on this, visit this previous blog post.
HPE Synergy 12000 Frame
HPE’s Synergy product line began shipping in November of 2016. Marketed as a “Frame”, the HPE Synergy 12000 Frame is simply the blade chassis for the Synergy line, the follow-on product to HPE’s long lasting ProLiant C7000 blade chassis. The Synergy 12000 Frame is 10U and supports up to 12 servers and/or storage devices. The front of the chassis also includes 2 slots for appliance modules such as the HPE Synergy Composer or the HPE Synergy Image Streamer. The rear of the chassis includes six I/O fabric, although if you require redundancy, it’s only 3 fabrics (1&4, 2&5 and 3&6.) The I/O fabrics map to mezzanine cards on each server, so in order to have connectivity from a blade server, you’ll need to have both a mezzanine card and a matching I/O module in the corresponding I/O fabric. The chassis supports up to 6 x 3400W power supplies.
- Height: 10U
- Max # of Servers Supported per chassis: 12
- Max # of Servers Supported per 42U Rack: 48
- Max # of Redundant I/O Bays: 3
- Max # of Power Supplies: 6
- Max Wattage / Power Supply: 3400W
For more information visit https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=c04815113.
Lenovo Flex System Enterprise Chassis
Lenovo launched their Flex System Enterprise Chassis in April 2015. The chassis is built to support 14 “nodes” which can be a combination of compute and storage. It has two hot-swap Chassis Management Modules for management of the components and supports up to 4 switches (redundantly designed in pairs: bays 1&3, 2&4). Its I/O architecture uses mezzanine cards on each blade server which maps to a corresponding switch bay (i.e. port 0 on a dual port card maps to Switch Bay 1; port 1 on the same card maps to Switch Bay 3.) The Flex System Enterprise Chassis supports up to 6 x 2500W power supplies.
- Height: 10U
- Max # of Servers Supported per chassis: 14
- Max # of Servers Supported per 42U Rack: 56
- Max # of Redundant I/O Bays: 2
- Max # of Power Supplies: 6
- Max Wattage / Power Supply: 2500W
For more information, check out https://lenovopress.com/tips0863-flex-system-enterprise-chassis.
I’ve made every effort to provide accurate information in the blog post, but I have been known to make mistakes, so if you see anything that isn’t right – or if you would like me to include additional information on something, let me know. Thanks for your ongoing support of this hobby of mine.
Kevin Houston is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of BladesMadeSimple.com. He has over 20 years of experience in the x86 server marketplace. Since 1997 Kevin has worked at several resellers in the Atlanta area, and has a vast array of competitive x86 server knowledge and certifications as well as an in-depth understanding of VMware and Citrix virtualization. Kevin has worked at Dell EMC since August 2011 as a Server Sales Engineer covering the Global Enterprise market from 2011 to 2017 and now works as a Chief Technical Server Architect supporting the Central Enterprise Region at Dell EMC.
Disclaimer: The views presented in this blog are personal views and may or may not reflect any of the contributors’ employer’s positions. Furthermore, the content is not reviewed, approved or published by any employer. No compensation has been provided for any part of this blog.