Introducing Allen or HP part number 367243-405

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280185292554&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ebay.co.uk%3A80%2Fsearch%2Fsearch.dll%3Ffrom%3DR40%26_trksid%3Dm37%26satitle%3D280185292554%26fvi%3D1

Allen is my HP BL30p Blade server which I purchased from a reseller in the US no less from ebay.

I’d been wanting to buy a blade, so that I could take some pictures, go over the basics of the platform as well as write about and document work arounds for issues I experienced with that model (some of which were related to me, not the kit). Also we’d had some questions at work about how they work, what they plug into, and this kind of thing is ideal.

Anyway, the specification are:

• Dual Intel Xeon 3.2GHz Processors
• 4GB RAM
• 10/100/1000 Ethernet
• No hard drives - they use notebook style drives

I’ve yet to buy one of these (230743-B21 - the diagnostic kit), it’s $2000 so am building myself up to it. The diagnostic kit allows you to connect and run a blade independently of the blade enclosure.

Regardless once Allen is safely delivered, I’ll be doing some content about setting it up, the basics for testing them and those secret hints I learned deploying them in volume. Like which jumper switch to flick so that it returns to factory default, or where the ILO username/password is.

At this point, my disclaimer.

In the interests of remaining vendor neutral, I want to do the same kind of thing for the Dell and IBM blades, but have started with the BL30p because I’ve deployed 500 or so of them, and it was the most affordable at the time on ebay. So sometime next year, after our first meet up, I’ll buy a Dell, IBM and any other blades I can think off and do the same. I Want to also try out the newer blades too.