|
|
HP
Blades |
SUN Blades |
|
Chassis flexibility |
BladeSystem c-Class, BladeSystem p-Class, bh 5700 ATCA |
SUN Blade 6000
SUN Blade 8000 |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
HP Blades vs
SUN Blades |
HP has only one
chassis being offered at the moment for enterprise customers which is
the C-Class Chassis, where SUN offer two different Chassis SUN Blade
6000 & SUN Blade 8000. Both SUN & HP have no compatibilities across
their chassis. You can't use modules & Blades across SUN 6000 & SUN
8000, as well you can't use Blades & Modules from HP older chassis into
their C-class chassis. |
|
Blade server flexibility |
Intel Xeon, AMD Opteron, Intel Itanium® |
Intel
Xeon, AMD Opteron, SPARC |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both HP & SUN are
offering AMD & Intel Blades. In the Unix side HP Offer Intel Itanium Blades
& SUN Offer SPARC Blades. So you can almost call it a tie on
this one. |
|
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 |
10
10
0
10
0 |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
SUN Blades vs
HP Blades |
It seems SUN has
only succeeded in fitting 10 Blades in 10 U chassis which makes it
lower Density than HP Chassis if you use a half height blade. We
call
SUN & HP Full Height Blades semi-redundant blades as they are not fully redundant as explained under
the redundancy comparison.
- SUN Density
is very low for a blade solution as they are not doing any better than
1U servers. Fitting 10 Blades in 10 U enclosure that is 1U per Blade
which could be easily matched with rack mounted servers. |
|
Redundancy |
- Single power connections to each blade
- Single I/O paths for Certain I/O slots
on most of their blades
|
- Single power connections to each blade
- Single I/O paths for Certain I/O slots
on most of their blades |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both HP & SUN seems
to miss the same redundancy points in their design. |
|
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 SUN & HP does
not require an expansion to fit hotswap HDDs, further more both does not
offer solid stat drives yet. |
|
Illuminated path to blade components |
HP offer diagnostics LEDs beside some components, but will not led without
power. |
Sun does not offer any equivalent. |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Better and faster
serviceability in the HP Blades with the ability to pinpoint the
problem using diagnostics LEDs, which is not offered at
all by SUN. Though it would be nice if HP had a backup battery in its
blade to get the LEDs to work when taken out for maintenance. |
|
Event identification |
Nothing Equivelent. |
Nothing Equivalent |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Neither HP nor SUN
offer Event identification system which would provide a better non over-lapping error
reporting through their Management solution which help in resolving cascaded
problems faster. |
|
Connectivity |
HP
Offer internal switches in addition to their pass-thrus offering for
most kind of connectivity available in the market today (Ethernet,
Fiber Channel, 10GB Ethernet , and InfiniBand). As well they offer it
from multiple vendors for some connectivity type. |
Sun only offer Pass-thru modules for all connectivity types, no internal
switches at all. |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
SUN Blades vs
HP Blades |
SUN fail to
integrate any switches into their offering, which make their blades
offering not any better than 1U servers offering. As they are already
packaging 10 blades in 10U Chassis, so no space saving. Further more,
they force you to use further space for external switches. In addition,
you don't get rid of all the nasty network & Fiber cables between the
chassis & the switches.
In the other
hand, HP Blades can fit up to 16 Blades in 10 U Chassis which save you on
space. Further more they allow you to fit all your required switches in
the chassis saving you further on space & cabling. It even look a lot
smoother when getting rid of the 100's of cables connecting the servers
to the switches in the case of 1Us server & SUN Blades.
Important note:
That HP offering for some connectivity switches are only unmanaged (e.g:
Inifiniband), though that still a lot better than not offering it at
all. |
|
Blade deployment and redeployment |
Virtual Connect |
No Equivelant |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
SUN 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.
SUN 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, but they still beat SUN on this one as SUN don't have
equivalent at all.
|
|
Built-in
Central
Management Module |
Almost |
N/A |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
HP Blades vs
SUN Blades |
HP management module
offers monitoring capabilities of chassis & Blades, but most management
of the blades are done directly to each blade using their ILO 2 chip
installed on each blade.
SUN Blades does not offer any equivalent to HP Management Module. They
only offer direct server management, which in turn means you still have
to manage your blades as a normal rack server, not as a blade
infrastructure. |
|
Efficient utilization of available power
resources |
HP Power Regulator |
N/A |
|
ITComparison Team Comments
HP Blades vs
SUN Blades |
HP power Regulator software are
able to monitor the power per blade, per chassis, & per module.
HP Power
Regulator can integrate with third party monitoring tools.
HP Power
management can cap power usage based on trend data.
SUN has no equivalent
offering at the moment.
|
|
Unpacking Offering |
Assembled at customer site (Default)
Fully Installed (Charge apply)
Fully Installed + third party apps
installed (Charge Apply) |
Assembled at customer site (Default)
Fully Installed (Charge apply)
N/A |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both HP & SUN Ship
their blades systems to be assembled on the customer site. |
|
Investment Protection |
Each Chassis is a fully different game. |
Each Chassis is a fully different game. |
|
ITComparison Team Comments |
Both SUN & HP
Chassis have no interopobility with their earlier offering. When
upgrading between HP or SUN chassis you would have to get rid of your
old blades & modules & replace them with new compatible ones,
which can be a huge waste of investment. In addition, both vendors have
no word on if that is going to hold for their next offering. |