HPE’s C7000 enclosure supports several different combinations of blades; including up to 16 half-height blades, eight full-height blades, eight expansion blades, or a combination of different form factors not exceeding 16 blades. With the ability to support a great deal of network and external storage connectivity, the BladeSystem c7000 is an excellent choice for extreme virtualization or use as a standalone or clustered SQL server, all of which require generous network connectivity.
While the server blades provide the compute and storage, the enclosure provides shared cooling, power, and networking for the supported blades that can then be managed as a single unified environment. The enclosure supports a minimum of four fans and up to ten redundant hot swap fans. Six power modules support single-phase and three-phase high-line or high-voltage AC power supplies or high voltage DC power options. Up to four redundant interconnect I/O fabrics are supported simultaneously including Ethernet, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, iSCSI, SAS, etc. Just about everything on the HPE c7000 chassis is redundant for increased resiliency, including the optional redundant BladeSystem Onboard Administrator Management Module.
The BladeSystem c7000 supports multiple server and networking configurations in a single enclosure, and can manage a single server or multiple servers for pooled resources. Several generations of server and storage blades are supported on the enclosure depending on the Onboard Administrator and Virtual Connect firmware levels. Although, HPE recommends the most current firmware be used to ensure maximum compatibility. The enclosure supports specific blades from Gen1 and blades from Gen5 through the current version Gen9.
The system features a converged infrastructure consolidating server, storage, networking, and power management. HP OneView combines the various components enabling them to be managed by a single integrated management platform. Along with Onboard Administrator and iLO remote, Administrators can manage the system on-site or remotely.
An optional BladeSystem Onboard Management module offers asset and inventory management, real-time power usage for individual servers and for the enclosure, integrated access to the integrated iLO modules on each server from a single cable, a front-mounted Insight Display, and integrated access to interconnect bay device management ports from a single cable.
HPE’s integrated management allows Administrators to manage the system as easily as a single server.
The BladeSystem c7000 offers Administrators the ability to easily scale by adding more blades or more enclosures. Once past the initial investment, the enclosure also provides a lower cost per server, less power consumption, and more efficient air-flow management compared to rack mounted servers. And, with several generations of server blades supported in the same chassis, the system will continue to support your network infrastructure for years to come.
