Technologies in HP ProLiant G7 c-Class server blades with AMD Opteron™ processors, 3rd Edition

PCI Express technology

All ProLiant G7 server blades support the PCIe 2.0 specification. PCIe 2.0 has a per-lane signaling rate of 5 Gb/s,

which is double the per-lane signaling rate of PCIe 1.0.

A ProLiant G7 option allows all expansion slots to run at PCIe 1.0 speed rather than at PCIe 2.0 speed. Enabling

this option saves power. You can control expansion slot speed through the RBSU under the Advanced Power

Configuration submenu.

HP Smart Array controllers and supported drive technology

ProLiant c-Class server blades with AMD processors support hot-plug small form factor (SFF) SAS, SATA, and solid

state (SSD) drives through integrated HP Smart Array controllers. ProLiant G7 server blades with AMD Opteron

processors use the Smart Array P410i controller with 1 GB FBWC.

A 1 GB FBWC is standard for the Smart Array P410i. It prevents losing information in the cache during an

unexpected system shutdown. In a controller failure, you can move the cache module and disks to a working

controller that will flush out the cache to the disks.

HP Smart Array technology enables system designs that deploy high-performance SAS and high-capacity SATA SFF

drives. SFF drives provide higher performance than large form factor (LFF) drives. The smaller platters of SFF drives

reduce seek times because the heads have a shorter distance to travel. RAID performance improves by increasing

the number of spindles.

SSDs connect to the host system using the same protocols as disk drives, but they store and retrieve file data in flash

memory arrays rather than on spinning media. SSDs eliminate the latency of traditional disk drives by eliminating

seek times and by powering up quickly. They also achieve high random-read performance. HP SSDs provide a level

of reliability equivalent to or slightly greater than current HP Midline disk drives for servers.

Optional mezzanine cards

HP ProLiant c-Class server blades use two types of mezzanine cards to connect to interconnect fabrics such as Fibre

Channel, Ethernet, SAS, or InfiniBand. Type I and Type II mezzanine cards differ only in the amount of power the

server allocates to them and in the physical space they occupy on the server blade. Type I mezzanine cards require

less power and are slightly smaller than Type II mezzanine cards. Type I mezzanine cards are compatible with all

mezzanine connectors in ProLiant c-Class server blades. Type II mezzanine cards are compatible with Mezzanine 2

or 3 connectors in full-height c-Class server blades. Type II mezzanine cards are also compatible with Mezzanine 2

connectors in half-height c-Class server blades.

Both types of mezzanine cards use a 450-pin connector, enabling up to eight lanes of differential transmit and

receive signals. The connections between the device bays and the interconnect bays are hard-wired through the

signal midplane. For that reason, you must match the mezzanine cards with the appropriate type of interconnect

module. For example, you must place a Fibre Channel mezzanine card in the mezzanine connector that connects to

an interconnect bay holding a Fibre Channel switch.

For the most up-to-date information about the c-Class mezzanine card options, go to the HP BladeSystem-

Interconnects website at

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/blades/components/c-class-interconnects.html.

Networking technologies

ProLiant G7 c-Class AMD-based server blades use integrated HP NC551i dual-port FlexFabric 10 Gb CNAs. The

NC551i delivers the performance benefits and cost savings of converged network connectivity without requiring an

add-on mezzanine card. The dual-port NC551i LOM optimizes network and storage traffic with hardware

acceleration and offloads for stateless TCP/IP, TCP Offload Engine (TOE), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and

iSCSI.