Our c-Class review unit contained preproduction BL460c blades sporting the new Intel quad-core Xeon CPUs. Running at 1.866Ghz with a 4MB L2 cache, a 1066 Mhz FSB, and 4GB of RAM per socket, these BL460c blades proved quite powerful. They turned in respectable SPEChpc scores, due in no small part to the 16-socket limitation of the testing balanced against four cores per socket. However, the lower clock rate per core and limited FSB may have cost HP in the SPEChpc tests, as their scores fell generally in the middle of the three solutions. It's also quite possible that more time needs to be spent on compiler optimizations for these newborn chips.

Like all the other vendors, HP chose InfiniBand as the interconnect for the HPC tests using an external Voltaire switch. But unlike Sun's X8400 blades, much of the c-Class I/O is handled internally with switching modules. This backplane switching architecture provides a closer relationship between the blades and significantly reduces cabling, but proved to be problematic in the lab: The HP engineers struggled with odd issues relating to InfiniBand connectivity and performance throughout the testing. It wasn't until the very end of the day, in fact, that they were able to complete the SPEChpc suite to satisfy the testing requirements.

On the network I/O side, though, HP can run with Cisco switching modules to keep intrachassis communication within the chassis itself. The Cisco modules behave exactly like external Cisco switches, which will please network admins already familiar with Cisco's hardware. External uplinks take the form of eight gigabit Ethernet ports per switch module, resulting in a total of eight ports that can be trunked to datacenter core switches.

Management ups and downs

BladeSystem runs its own internal management console, accessible via the Web, that can stand alone or be integrated into an HP Insight Manager installation. Multiple c-Class chassis may be managed collectively in this manner, regardless of whether Insight Manager is in place, which is quite useful for large data centers. Administrator-driven tools offer a wide array of monitoring options, from current and maximum power utilization and environmental data to blade health and performance information.

Internal chassis management is even more impressive. The chassis has enough smarts to determine the heat and power loads present and advise admins on proper fan population and placement. It will adapt power supplies as needed and where needed, as well as drop power levels to quiescent blades when possible. This results in lower heat production and power consumption, which are hot buttons (pun intended) as far as blade development and deployment go.

Not everything with the HP blade, however, worked as smoothly as its chassis management. The console redirection available in each blade's ILO cards was somewhat lacking, with problematic mouse tracking and display artifacts. This can be very irritating when work must be performed directly to the console of each blade. The only other console redirection method involves using a front-mounted dongle port to connect a keyboard, monitor, and mouse directly to each blade. Not pretty, but it does work.

We also encountered a few oddities with the chassis, including one blade that seemed to have intermittent connectivity problems and another that spontaneously lost contact with its internal SmartArray RAID controller. It's highly likely that the pre-release nature of the blades contributed to these issues.

Nevertheless, HP completed the full SPEChpc benchmark suite runs at the small and medium dataset levels within a single day, complying with the testing parameters. A few lab hiccups aside, the BladeSystem c-Class is an impressive piece of engineering. The wide variety of blade options, including the disk-only blades; up-front display; adaptive power and cooling features; and density show that the c-Class definitely adheres to HP's "Invent" slogan.