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 October 2007: HP is the market leader in server blade units and revenue. As the top blade vendor we expect that our competitors will attack us in lieu of delivering better solutions. Instead of promoting the virtues of their new solution for the SMB, IBM recently used their announcement press release to launch an aggressive attack on our Blade System c3000 (aka Shorty).
We are confident that most customers will view this approach as a desperate tactic by a vendor that is losing in the market place. We welcome this opportunity to tell the real story about Shorty and refute the claims1 made by IBM.
This short story is non-fiction:
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Fact 1: IBM is comparing the yet to ship IBM BladeCenter S to the already available HP BladeSystem c3000.(2) |
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Customers can get the HP BladeSystem c3000 now but reports indicate that the BladeCenter S won’t even ship until December.3
IBM’s comparison of a currently shipping HP solution to a future IBM offering cannot be verified in a vendor neutral way.
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Fact 3: IBM claims that the HP BladeSystem c3000 is more expensive but this is the result of an “apples to bowling ball comparison”. In an “apples to apples” configuration comparison, the HP BladeSystem c3000 has a lower list price than the IBM BladeCenter S. |
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IBM BladeCenter S |
HP BladeSystem c3000 |
Enclosure and 6 blade servers
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$22,926
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$24,841
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BladeCenter S Storage modules
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$10,176
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External Tape Loader
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$10,311
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$10,399
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BNT Layer 2/3 Ethernet Switch
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$2,399
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$1,799
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Total
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$45,8125
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$36,039
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HP blade serves include 2 hot-plug 146GB drives per server (RAID 1 mirrored) in the server price – no additional cost.
Of course, the comparison above is somewhat theoretical as the HP BladeSystem c3000 is currently shipping and available to customers while the IBM BladeCenter S is still yet to ship.6
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Fact 4: IBM claims that the HP BladeSystem c3000 is so loud that you can’t hold a normal conversation nearby. HP testing of the HP BladeSystem c3000 has shown that in fact you can hold a normal conversation in the proximity of the HP BladeSystem c3000. |
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We can’t wait to hear the IBM BladeCenter S, when it finally ships, so that we can do our own comparison.
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Fact 5: IBM claims that HP has limited storage options, but in fact HP offers a broad portfolio for of both external and internal storage for HP BladeSystem c3000. |
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- For external storage HP offers a wide range of options including external NAS, iSCSI SAN and fibre channel SAN. Additionally, HP offers external storage connectivity for all of the major SAN and NAS vendors. When using the BladeCenter S storage modules, it is not clear that you can attach to external fibre channel or iSCSI SAN.
- For internal storage blades HP offers the SB40c Direct Attach Storage Blade, the 448c Ultrium Tape Blade and the recently announced All-in-One SB600c Storage Blade. IBM does not offer tape nor iSCSI SAN blades like HP does
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Fact 6: IBM claims that HP Virtual Connect does not support industry standard 3rd party switches like their Open Fabric Manager. The fact is that HP Virtual Connect can attach to any industry standard Ethernet or NPIV enabled fibre channel switch. Moreover, the HP Virtual Connect is an available product, shipping now, but IBM states that Open Fabric Manager is still forthcoming.(7) |
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And, when Open Fabric Manager launches it still leaves the customer with only the choices of too many cables or too many switches. More importantly, the HP BladeSystem Virtual Connect offers feature that IBM’s BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager can’t match.8
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HP BladeSystem Virtual Connect |
IBM BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager |
Reduce cables w/o adding switches to manage
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Cleanly separate server mgt from LAN & SAN mgt
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Add, move, and replace servers anywhere in the data center
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Replace failed server in same server bay
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Move server to another bay as long as same LAN & SAN connections already exist there
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Move server to another bay in domain without pre-configuring specific LAN & SAN connections
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Assign & move MAC addresses & World Wide Names
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Assign & move complete server FC SAN boot parameters
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Assign & move LAN & SAN network connections
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Replace failed server with any server in the data center without going into the data center to move a cable
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VMotion across two physical servers without changing network connections
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Fact 7: IBM claims that HP does not support KVM (keyboard, video, and mouse) for the HP BladeSystem c3000. In fact the HP BladeSystem c3000 supports two options for KVM. |
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- The built-in iLO processor on each ProLiant server blade delivers KVM functionality over IP.
- For customers that want to attach the enclosure to a traditional in-rack KVM, HP offers a local KVM module for the c3000.
Bottom line: It appears that IBM has good reason to be concerned about blade solutions from HP. The HP BladeSystem c3000 is another winner from HP. The HP BladeSystem c3000 recently won the 2007 CRN Tech Innovator Award for the server hardware category. 9
That’s a great endorsement of the HP BladeSystem c3000 from an independent third party, not a competitor.
Don’t hear it from IBM, see and hear it from us. You’ll like our videos better.
Please visit the video series, "Straight Talk about Blades".
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