[Info-vax] c-Class BladeSystem, HPE Synergy, Composable Infrastructure (was: Re: HBAs on x86)

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-06-26 16:24:12 +0000, John H. Reinhardt said:

> It's possible now that by the time OpenVMS x86 is available, the 
> C-Class blade may be irrelevant.

In a year or two, I'd bet on that.  Whether with the ~decade-old 
c-Class hardware, or more generally.

I'd bet that most of the existing x86-64 server and storage hardware 
will be irrelevant by the time we're running our apps in production on 
OpenVMS x86-64.

The hardware upgrade cycles are much faster in x86-64 than most OpenVMS 
folks are accustomed to, too.  Three to five years for servers, and 
gone.

And VSI will have specific supported and tested server and I/O 
configurations, and probably comparatively fairly few of those when 
they're just getting started with x86-64.

We'll be buying what's supported, either in terms of hardware or hypervisors.

> HPE c-Class Blades are going End of Life after Gen10, which also means 
> End of Support for all previous generations. HPE will not be 
> manufacturing Gen11 Blades, but instead move to a new technology that 
> will replace and surpass blade infrastructure, HPE Synergy.
> 
> I haven't looked into the "Synergy" product yet to see what it is.

It's all headed for what HPE refers to as "Composable Infrastructure".  
They've been marketing that concept heavily for the past several years 
now, too.  The Apollo cartridges were an early part of that.

Scrounge a copy of the _HPE BladeSystem to HPE Synergy Migration for 
Dummies_ book for a buzz-phrase-heavy and high-level overview of HPE 
Synergy.

For those folks running local blade hardware, an obvious HPE hardware 
replacement is the HPE Synergy Frame 12000 box.

https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04815113.pdf

For others, maybe HPE Moonshot blades?

https://www.hpe.com/us/en/servers/moonshot.html

Some parts of HPE Synergy will integrate with existing HPE hardware and 
software pieces, and some other existing hardware and software will be 
rather more "compostable" than "composable".

For those of you that might have seen the Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS 
or similar hosting control panels, that's where HPE is headed with 
Synergy.  Software-defined hardware, networking, etc.

VSI will probably be tying OpenVMS into DMTF/RedFish, and with the 
intent to integrate with HPE OneView.  Or some analog.

As for some of the other server and blade hardware that's presently 
available, I find the ~960 TB SSD 1U servers now available from 
SuperMicro quite interesting.  Those "petascale" servers are... dense.

> At the very least though it should mean that C-Class blades will start 
> to be available on the surplus market at much cheaper prices.

Prices dropping?  Don't bet on it.  Not in the short-to-mid range.  
Surplus c-class BladeSystem pieces and parts have been fairly cheap for 
a while, as compared with new.  But as the new hardware becomes 
unavailable, the prices on the functional used equipment tends to 
climb.  This as folks start seeking out spares and replacements.  If 
you do have to deal with a c-Class BladeSystem configuration, prepare 
for as much as ~200 kg per box, too.


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Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC