Specifications

Chapter 1. Introduction to IBM System Networking 10Gb Ethernet products 43
1.6.4 IBM BladeCenter HT
IBM BladeCenter HT (Figure 1-22) is a carrier grade, rugged 12U chassis designed for
challenging central office and networking environments.
Figure 1-22 IBM BladeCenter HT chassis front view
It provides:
򐂰 NEBS Level 3/ETSI-tested: Designed for the Network Equipment Provider (NEP) and
Service Provider (SP) environments. Also ideal for government, military, aerospace,
industrial automation and robotics, medical imaging, and finance. Certified testing by
Underwriters Laboratories of the IBM BladeCenter HT chassis is in progress; when
complete, it will be covered under a UL-certified NEBS Level 3/ETSI test report.
򐂰 Designed for Carrier-Grade Linux: Several distributions are supported, include SUSE and
Red Hat.
򐂰 Reduced single points of failure: Many major components (either standard or optionally)
are hot-swappable or redundant. Servers and modules can be configured for automatic
failover to backups.
򐂰 Compatibility with earlier versions: Every blade, switch, and pass-through module
released by IBM, since the original IBM BladeCenter E chassis in 2002, is supported in the
IBM BladeCenter HT chassis.
򐂰 High-speed redundant midplane connections: Based on 4X InfiniBand, the midplane
supports up to 40 Gb bandwidth and provides four 10 Gb data channels to each blade. By
giving each blade two physical connections to the midplane that connects all blades and
modules together internally, a failure of one connector alone cannot bring down
the server.
򐂰 Twelve 30 mm blade slots: These hot-swap slots can support any combination of blade
servers, or six double-wide (60 mm) blade servers, or a mixture of 30 mm and 60 mm
blades. It also supports multiple optional 30 mm Expansion Units in combination with the
blade servers, using the same blade slots. Up to three chassis can be installed in an
industry-standard 42U rack, for a total of up to 36 30 mm blade servers per rack.