Specifications

A Principled Technologies test report 2
The datacenter in a box performance test: Comparing Dell and HP
blade solutions
BETTER PERFORMANCE AND MORE USERS WITH EASIER SETUP AND
LESS COSTLY OPERATION
In our study, we examined the following blade server-network-storage solutions
to see how well they would meet the needs of a small to medium business (SMB) or
departmental computing solution within a large enterprise:
 The Dell EqualLogic PS-M4110 solution: Three Dell PowerEdge™ M620
servers with two Dell EqualLogic PS-M4110 Blade Arrays, 2 Dell Force10
MXL 10/40GbE Blade Switches and 2 Dell PowerConnect™ M8024-k
10GbE switches
 The HP D2200sb + VSA solution: Three HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 blade
servers, two HP StorageWorks D2200sb storage blades, and two HP
ProLiant BL460c Gen8 partner blades to manage the storage, and four
HP Flex-10 10GbE switches
As Figure 1 shows, the Dell solution is considerably more streamlined, with
three server blades and two storage blades vs. the HP solution’s five servers and two
storage blades. Note that the Dell Force10 MXL blade switches are interlinked by a 40G
connection. All other connections in Figure 1 are 10G connections.
Figure 1. The Dell solution includes a total of five bladestwo storage blades and three server blades, one for each of
the three workloads. The HP solution requires two additional partner blades to manage the storage, for a total of seven
blades.