HPE ProLiant BL685c Gen7 Server Blade

Description

This full-height server blade offers a perfect mix of performance, memory capacity, and compute throughput for mission-critical workloads. The HPE ProLiant BL685c Gen7 supports up to four AMD Opteron processors with up to 16 cores, but you can start out with just two processors and scale to four as business needs change. This server blade is designed for the BladeSystem c7000 enclosure, which can hold up to eight BL465c blades in a 10U enclosure, or the c3000 enclosures capable of supporting up to four blades in.

Performance

Only two and four processor combinations are supported on the HPE BL685c Gen7 server blade. Choose from AMD Opteron series 6100, 6200, or 6300 processors with 4, 8, 12, or 16 cores each for up to 64 cores in a four-processor configuration.

Memory

Depending on your choice of processor, memory, and configuration memory can run at speeds of 800MHz, 1066MHz, or 1333MHz. Supported DDR3 memory modules include Registered (RDIMM), and Load Reduced (LRDIMM) modules. Each processor connects to eight memory slots for 32 active slots total in a four processor configuration. Both RDIMM and LRDIMM memory modules will provide up to 1TB of capacity with 32 x 32GB memory modules, but LRDIMMs will provide the greatest speed at up to 1333MHz compared to a maximum of 1066MHz for Registered DIMMs.

Storage

Two storage bays on the front of the system support SAS or SATA HDDs or SSDs. The stated maximum internal storage is 2.4TB using two 1.2TB hot plug SAS drives. An HPE SmartArray P410i storage controller supports 1GB of flash-backed write cache (FBWC) and transfer rates of 6G for SAS and 3G for SATA. The P140i controller is required for hot plug drive support and supports RAID configurations of 0 and 1. Drive types cannot be mixed.

Expansion

There are three I/O expansion mezzanine slots on the motherboard, all x8 PCIe 2.0 slots and both enclosures support Type 1 and Type II mezzanine cards. Mezzanine card expansion slots enable up to three fibre channel HBAs to be installed for enhanced network connectivity, each of which will require a fibre channel switch in the enclosure interconnect bay. For access to external storage an HPE Smart Array SAS controller must be installed in a mezzanine slot and also requires a complimentary HPE 6Gb SAS switch in the interconnect bay of the enclosure. Another cost saving feature is two embedded Dual port 10Gb FlexFabric Converged Network Adapters, which helps to reduce infrastructure cost and simplifies managing converged LAN and SAN traffic over the same 10Gb Ethernet connection. Integrated graphics support provides monitor resolutions of 1280 x 1024. Embedded hypervisors are supported with an internal SD connector.

Management

Remote management of the system is provided by HPE’s integrated Lights-Out 3.0 (iLO 3) that operates in-band and out-of-band. HPE’s Insight Dynamics suite also provides advanced infrastructure management allowing you to deploy and manage servers quickly and proactively. Insight Control also allows integration with third-party enterprise management consoles like Microsoft Systems Center and VMware vCenter.

Summary

This server is adept at handling compute-intensive database workloads and significant virtualization. It offers a high-performance solution at a significant savings over similar server blades outfitted with Intel Xeon processors, while still delivering HPE’s world-class integrated and optional management tools.