Operating instructions

Chapter 2. IBM eServer BladeCenter

overview

The IBM Eserver BladeCenter innovative modular technology, leadership density, and

availability was designed to help solve a multitude of real-world problems.

For organizations seeking server consolidation, the BladeCenter centralizes servers for

increased flexibility, ease of maintenance, reduced cost, and streamlined human resources.

Companies that need to deploy new e-commerce and e-business applications can achieve

speed while ensuring flexibility, scalability, and availability. For enterprise requirements such

as file-and-print and collaboration, the BladeCenter is designed to offer reliability, flexibility for

growth, and cost effectiveness. And clients with compute-intensive applications that need

highly available clustering can use the BladeCenter to help achieve high degrees of scalability

and performance.

The IBM eServer BladeCenter family of products features a modular design that integrates

multiple computing resources into a cost-effective, high-density enclosure for a platform that:

򐂰 Reduces installation, deployment, and redeployment time

򐂰 Reduces administrative costs with our helpful management tools

򐂰 Achieves the highest levels of availability and reliability

򐂰 Provides XpandonDemand scale-out capability

򐂰 Reduces space and cooling requirements compared to 1U solutions

To understand more about how the Cisco Systems Intelligent Gigabit Ethernet Switch Module

is designed to operate in the BladeCenter, we suggest that you continue to read the following

sections to understand the BladeCenter architecture. If you seek to know more about the

BladeCenter and its components, we suggest that you read the IBM Redpaper, The Cutting

Edge: IBM

Eserver

BladeCenter, REDP-3581. This Redpaper can be acquired at:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/abstracts/redp3581.html