HP BladeSystem c3000

We have High Performace Computing (HPC) cluster I’d like to show. It has 72 cores and 152GB of RAM in total. We use ROCKS as cluster middleware. Interconnect is DDR InfiniBand.

We have two groups of servers. First group is two BL2x220c  blades. Since they are double-sided it’s actually four servers. Each with two 4-core CPUs and 16GB of RAM. Second group consists of five BL280c. Each of them also has two 4-core CPUs but 24 GB of RAM. Eighth server is BL260c. This blade serves as master server.

Click pictures to enlarge.

BL280c blade server. This dude has 8 Xeon cores and 24GB of RAM.

Every component of HP BladeSystem c3000 is hot-swappable. Here I show how I disconnect Onboard Adminstrator on fully operational system.

Fans, power supplies and all interconnects are on the back.

Here is the 16-port DDR InfiniBand switch. Each port’s throughput is 80GB/s FDX.

Uplink ports for Onboard Administrator.

16 ports of Ethernet pass-through for blade servers.

Six power supplies in N+1 redundant configuration. Each is capable of 1200 Watts. 7200 Watts in total.

Inside blade server.

InfiniBand mezzanine. One such module is capable of 80Gb/s FDX.

If you are interested in benchmarking results find them here for pure IB and here for IBoIP.

Advertisement

HP BladeSystem c3000 Power Subsystem

BladeSystem’s Onboard Administrator provides load of data on power consumption of blades, interconnects and chassis. Here are the basic fields:

• Present Power – amount of power which is being currently consumed by the whole system.
• Max Input Power – total amount of power system can draw from line feed. It’s power supply output capacity multiplied by number of power supplies. In my case it’s: 6 x 1200 = 7200 Watts.
• Power Capacity – amount of power system can draw taking into consideration your power supply redundant status. My configuration is in Power Redundant mode where one power supply is in standby redundant state. Hence Power Capacity for me equals 6000 Watts.
• Power Allocated – how much power your system can possibly consume in case of CPU load increase, etc. But be carefull, it’s not a theoretical peak for your configuration. This number can change if you power on/power off your blades. Power allocation for power offed blade equals to 0 Watts.

HP BladeSystem c3000 power issue

Today I faced a problem when HP ProLiant BL260c G5  blade rejected to boot with “System Halted until Power Condition is Corrected” error. Blade sits in HP BladeSystem c3000 chassis. Incident which led to this error was lost of power by one of power supplies. Even though issue was resolved and power restored blade still rejected to boot.

Same problem is described here http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-BladeSystem-Chassis-Power/Blade-Power-Error/td-p/1155736 and here http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-BladeSystem-Chassis-Power/BL685c-G6-power-issue-Need-advice/td-p/1164218.

Solution to this error was as simple as power cycle the blade by physically disconnecting it from the chassis and plugging back in.

HP BladeSystem c3000 weight

Just out of curiosity I’ve calculated weight of our HP BladeSystem c3000:

Power Supply: 1.13 kg x 6 = 6.78 kg
Fan: 1.8 kg x 6 = 10,8 kg
Enclosute: 59 kg
BL2x220c G5: 5.9 kg x 2 = 11.8 kg
BL260c G5: 4.54 kg x 1 = 4.54 kg
BL280c G6: 6.58 kg x 5 = 32.9 kg
All in all it’s about 125kg.