Technologies in HP ProLiant G6 c-Class server blades with AMD Opteron™ processors

Abstract

This technology brief describes the architecture and the implementation of major technologies in HP

ProLiant G6 c-Class Server Blades based on AMD Opteron™ processors. Much of the content of this

paper is similar or identical to the content of a companion paper about the technologies in HP

ProLiant G6 server blades based on Intel® Xeon® processors because many of the same technologies

have been implemented in both.

It is assumed that the reader is familiar with HP ProLiant server technology and has some knowledge

of BladeSystem architecture. For more information about the infrastructure components and complete

specifications of each server blade, see the HP website: www.hp.com/go/bladesystem/

ProLiant c-Class server blade architecture

An HP ProLiant c-Class Server Blade is a complete server that slides into an HP BladeSystem c-Class

Enclosure. Three different c-Class enclosures are available to meet the needs of large or small IT

environments:

 The HP BladeSystem c7000 rack enclosure is 10U high and holds up to 16 ProLiant c-Class server

blades.

 The HP BladeSystem c3000 rack enclosure is 6U high and holds up to 8 ProLiant c-Class server

blades.

 The HP BladeSystem c3000 tower enclosure is designed with casters for sites without racks. It holds

up to 8 ProLiant c-Class server blades inserted vertically.

The rack enclosures fit in HP 10000 series racks and can operate with as few as one server blade

installed. The greatest advantage of blade architecture, however, is the ease of adding more server

blades. ProLiant c-Class server blades are built in standard form-factors, referred to as half-height (4U)

and full-height (8U). Both half-height and full-height server blades fit into any device bay in a

BladeSystem c-Class enclosure.

ProLiant G6 c-Class server blades based on AMD Opteron processors include enterprise-class

technologies:

 Two or four AMD Opteron processors

 Thermal Logic technologies

 Advanced memory technologies

 Multiple slots for I/O cards

 Integrated multifunction Ethernet network adapters that support TCP/IP offload engine (TOE)

and

iSCSI acceleration

 Hot-plug internal disk drives

 Power management

Half-height server blades support up to 2 processors, 8 to 16 DIMM slots, up to 2 hot-plug or non

hot-plug drives, 1 dual-port integrated Ethernet adapter, and up to 2 mezzanine slots. Optional

mezzanine cards support multiple types of I/O fabric connectivity to the interconnect bays (Figure 1).

More information about BladeSystem c-Class enclosure configuration options can be found at

http://www.hp.com/go/bladesystem/

TOE technology moves processing transactions from the main processor on a server blade to a processor

embedded on the network interconnect card. This frees the main processor for other work.