Filter
Top Products
Figure 9. Logically overlaying physical lanes (right) onto sets of four traces (left)
Each device bay connector has a 100-pin signal connector with 64 high-speed signal pins hard-wired
from the device bay connector to the interconnect bays. This configuration results in 16 lanes (64 ÷ 4)
to each interconnect bay, which provides at least two lanes to each interconnect port for connectivity
to LAN, storage area network (SAN), InfiniBand, or any other interconnect type. Full-height servers
occupy two half-height device bays and, therefore, have up to 32 lanes available.
A single lane supports up to 10-Gb signals, depending on the protocol requirement. Each lane
provides the flexibility of 1x, 2x, or 4x connections from the server blade mezzanine cards, which
provide connectivity to the interconnect bays. The rear of the enclosure includes four interconnect bays
that can accommodate four single or two redundant interconnect modules. All interconnect modules
plug directly into these interconnect bays. Each HP BladeSystem c3000 Enclosure requires two
interconnect switches or two pass-thru modules, side-by-side, for a fully redundant configuration.
The signal midplane also includes the management signals from each bay to the Onboard
Administrator modules. These management signals are completely isolated from the high-speed
server-to-interconnect signals. The Onboard Administrator is the terminating point for all interconnect
bays. An interconnect module cannot use the connection to the Onboard Administrator to
communicate with another interconnect module.
Interconnect modules
The BladeSystem c3000 enclosure supports a variety of interconnect options, including pass-thru
modules, Ethernet and Fibre Channel switches, and high-bandwidth fabrics such as InfiniBand. The
HP website (
www.hp.com/go/bladesystem/interconnects) contains the most up-to-date information about
the c-Class interconnect modules.
Switches offer a traditional approach to administering the network. The primary value in blade
switches is cable consolidation through high-speed uplinks and the shared blade power and cooling
infrastructure.
Ethernet and Fibre Channel pass-thru modules are available when direct one-to-one connections
between servers and LAN or SAN are required. HP Ethernet and Fibre Channel Pass-Thru Modules
provide 16-port, transparent, 1:1 port connectivity between the server and an external switch.
Interconnect modules in the c3000 are available in two widths: single- and double-wide. Single-wide
interconnect modules provide sixteen internal ports, each connected to a separate device bay in the
front of the enclosure. Double-wide interconnect modules provide sixteen internal ports, each double-
wide, providing connectivity to DDR Infiniband and other 4-lane high speed interconnects.
15