|
|
HP
Blades |
DELL Blades |
|
Chassis flexibility |
BladeSystem c-Class, BladeSystem p-Class, bh 5700 ATCA |
PowerEdge 1955
PowerEdge M1000e |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
HP Blades vs
Dell Blades |
HP had offered three
chassis. Two of them are out of the market & their C-Class chassis is
their latest & only available chassis today.
Dell had offered
two Chassis PowerEdge 1955 & PowerEdge M1000e. Their latest is M1000e
which is their only available offering at the moment.
Both of HP &
Dell have no interoperability between their chassis. |
|
Blade server flexibility |
Intel Xeon, AMD Opteron, Intel Itanium® |
Intel
Xeon, AMD Opteron |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both HP & Dell had
AMD & Intel blades offering, though HP offer Intel Itanium blades in
addition to their AMD & Intel blades. HP Itanium blades can run their
Unix platform, where dell has no equivalent. |
|
Blades/Chassis
Full Height
Blades/Chassis
Fully Redundant
Blades/Chassis
Blades w/ hotswap
HDD per chassis
Fully Redundant
Blades w/ hotswap HDD |
16
8
0
16
0 |
16
8
0
16
0 |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
Dell Blades vs
HP Blades |
It seems Dell has succeeded to fit
as much blades as HP does into its chassis. They can fit up to 16 half
height blade & 8 full height Blades.
When it come to
consider redundancy then Both vendors half height has only one connector for
power & I/O. So for better redundancy you would rather use the full
height blades, which as well still not redundant on power. |
|
Redundancy |
- Single power
connections to each blade
-
Single I/O connections on BL460c and BL465c blades
-
Single I/O paths for mezzanine slots 2 and 3 on the BL480c and BL685c
|
- Single power connections to each blade
- Single I/O connections on M600 and
M605 blades
- Single I/O paths for Certain I/O slots
on M805 & M905 |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
It seems both HP &
Dell are not far from each other when its related to redundancy. |
|
Hot Swap
HDD
Solid
State Drives (SSD) |
No need for expansion
unit which save space
Not Available |
No need for expansion
unit which save space
Not Available |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both Dell & HP
Blades can fit Hot Swap HDD without requiring expansion units, but
neither of them offer Solid State Drives. I would call it a tie on this
point as well. |
|
Illuminated path to blade components |
HP offer diagnostics LEDs beside some components, but will not led without
power. |
Dell offer diagnostics LEDs beside some components, but will not led without
power. |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both Dell and HP
offer LED Diagnostics for main components of their blades, but they
don't use a battery to keep the led on after the blade being removed. |
|
Event identification |
N/A |
N/A |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Neither HP nor Dell
offer Event identification which could help in providing a better
non over-lapping error reporting which would help in resolving cascaded
problems faster. |
|
Integrated 4X InfiniBand® switch modules |
Unmanaged
InfiniBand Switches |
Unmanaged
InfiniBand Switches |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both Dell & HP only
offer unmanaged InfiniBand Switches at the moment. They might be working
on offering managed infiniBand switches in the future. |
|
Blade deployment and redeployment |
Virtual Connect |
No Equivelant |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
Dell Blades vs
HP Blades |
Virtual Connect provide automatic failover for failing blade to another blade
using boot from SAN functionality. In addition, it removes all the work
involved in replacing a failing blade.
Dell Does not
offer anything equivalent to HP Virtual Connect & will require the
admin to reconfigure the SAN Zoning & the network VLANs when
replacing any blade wasting precious time & increase the downtime
required to replace a blade.
Note: HP requires
special proprietary SAN & Network switches in order for their Virtual
Connect to work, but they still beat Dell on this one as Dell don't have equivalent at all. |
|
Built-in
Central
Management Module |
Almost |
Almost |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
HP Blades vs
Dell Blades |
Dell user Chassis Management Controller (CMC) which seems to mainly offer
monitoring & log readings is very similar to the management module
offered by HP, not much of a centralized management. Dell
still more dependant on directly managing a blade by blade connecting
directly to the iDRAC chip placed into each blade, where HP depend on
their iLO chips to directly managing blades by Blade as well. |
|
Efficient utilization of available power
resources |
HP Power Regulator |
Dell
Power Manager |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
HP Blades vs
Dell Blades |
HP power Regulator software are
able to monitor the power per blade, per chassis, & per module.
Dell Power Manager
can monitor power per blade & Chassis, but not per modules.
HP Power
Regulator can integrate with third party monitoring tools, where
Dell Power Manager does not seems to be integration ready.
HP Power
management can cap power usage based on trend data & without risking
the operation of the blades, where Dell only offer a hard threshold
which can cause operations problems. |
|
Unpacking Offering |
Assembeled at customer site (Default)
Fully Installed (Charge apply)
Fully Installed + third party apps
installed (Charge Apply) |
Fully Assembeled (Default) |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
HP Blades vs
Dell Blades |
Dell had made a
great deal of them delivering their blades fully installed & ready to
power on and not having to assemble it at customers site. Although this
definitely can save customers time, it can't be the main selling point
for a blade offering. As both IBM & HP has a similar offering, but they
explicitly charge for it where Dell had implicitly accounted for it in
each chassis delivered.
Furthermore, IBM &
HP offer to deliver your blades fully installed with third party apps &
modules integrated, which Dell still not offering. |
|
Investment Protection |
Each Chassis is a fully different game. |
Each Chassis is a fully different game. |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both Dell & HP
Chassis have no interopobility with their earlier offering. When
upgrading between HP or Dell chassis you would have to get rid of your
old blades & modules & replace them with new compatible ones. |