Integrated Switching: Cisco Blade Switch Modules for HP BladeSystem Enclosures

As a company’s data center expands, complexity increases. A proliferation of cabling and management tools hinders a company’s ability to adapt quickly to changing business needs. Meanwhile, total cost of ownership (TCO) creeps steadily upward because of rising power and cooling costs, increased rack space requirements and more complicated provisioning and management needs.

Companies around the world have simplified their data center infrastructures using the HP BladeSystem, an all-in-one data center infrastructure combining servers and storage as well as storage area networking (SAN) and Ethernet network connectivity. Consolidating multiple blades and an integrated network appliance into a single chassis increases data center efficiency by reducing cabling requirements and simplifying management. It also decreases power costs, increases reliability with redundant, heavy-duty power supplies and fans and conserves rack space. What’s more, TCO drops as a result of using shared HP BladeSystem resources, which reduce both up-front and ongoing costs over the life of the data center.