IBM BladeCenter HT Chassis

A powerful blade chassis that supports NGN applications for telecommunications environments

The IBM eServer BladeCenter HT Chassis is an ideal blade server solution for telecommunication companies that are embracing the newest VOIP (Voice-Over IP), streaming video, gaming and blended services applications for their NGN (Next-Generation Networks). The BladeCenter HT Chassis provides the throughput & low-latency that these NGN applications need.

The BladeCenter HT chassis is ideal for those deploying solutions such as:

• IMS (IP multimedia subsystem)
• HLR (home location register)
• HSS (home subscriber server)
• SIP (session initiation protocol server)
• MRF (media resource function)
• IPTV (Internet Protocol television)
• VoD (Video on Demand)
• VPN (virtual private network), with intrusion prevention, denial-of-service prevention, traffic shaping, antivirus, deep-packet inspection, lawful intercept and anti-spam
• QoS (Quality of Service)
• SS7 (signaling system 7) control gateways
• VoIP (voice over IP)
• PSTN (public switched telephone network) interfacing

For functionality across all three planes; services, control and transport, the BladeCenter HT delivers the performance in an open solution built with COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) components, enabling telecommunication providers to integrate servers, I/O, storage, operating systems for ease of management and maximum availability for rugged environments. IBM's BladeCenter T Chassis complies with the telecommunications industry's stringent telecommunications standards & demands.

• standard-sized 20" deep chassis
• 8U form factor
• 1.2Tbps throughput
• 8 x 2-way and up to 4 x 4-way blade server bays
• up to 4 optional hot-swappable, redundant 1300W AC or DC power supplies with load balancing and failover capabilities
• redundant KVM/Management module for system management resiliency
• 60MB CD-DVD (RW) media bay accessible from each blade server
• support for DC (-48v) and AC power for enterprise & telco environments
• NEBS platform with Level 3- and ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) - compliance

IBM BladeCenter HT Chassis includes IBM Director, a set of management tools that deliver advanced, proactive management capabilities to maximize IT staff productivity and provide rock-solid reliability. Predictive Failure Analysis® is also included and can minimize downtime by enabling proactive alerts to take corrective action up to 48 hours in advance.

The included light path diagnostics and self-diagnostics panel that come with the IBM BladeCenterH T Chassis utilizes LEDs located on the front and back of the unit so administrators can troubleshoot and resolve hardware issues to maximize system uptime.

The optional IBM Director Server Plus Pack Advanced server management assists administrators to accurately measure planned v.s. unplanned downtime to display the benefits of the system management investment, and the included capacity manager enables the dynamic monitoring of critical system resources to enable user to accurately pinpoint and address bottlenecks and performance issues before they affect production environments.

IBM’s XpandOnDemand™ capability allows you to “pay as you grow” and Light path diagnostics provide you with a quick and easy way to troubleshoot your blade server infrastructure, maximizing uptime and availability.

Calibrated Vectored Cooling™ maintains the health of your system by keeping components cool, so you can maximize compute density and approach OnForever™ reliability.

Transport Plane Performance

The transport plane supports applications such as:

• wireless access gateways, narrow and wideband, or WiMax
• Broadband Network Services
• PSTN & legacy interconnects
• LAN/WAN interconnects
• media gateways
• signaling gateways (SS7)

As the network’s path to the outside world, the transport plane of a telecommunication platform must be reliable and responsive, requiring high throughput and I/O performance.

The IBM BladeCenter HT Chassis is specially designed to meet the requirements of the transport plane, with features such as:

• multi-terabit backplane for high-performance packet processing
• 40Gbps throughput for high I/O bandwidth
• support for high-speed I/O interfaces & protocols such as OC1, OC3, ATM, GiGE, SS7, T1/E1 and J1
• ability to utilize Nortel 10Gb Ethernet switch with non-blocking architecture for low latency performance

Control Plane Performance

The control plane supports applications such as:

• Wireless Base Station Controllers (BSC)
• Home Location Register/Subscriber Server (HLR/HSS)
• Session Border Control (SBC)
• Session Initiation Protocol, or SIP Server
• Media Gateway Controller Function (MGCF)
• Softswitch

This segment of the telecommunications acts as the middleman between the service and transport planes, and requires the same high-performance processing and I/O bandwidth that the transport plane requires.

The IBM BladeCenter includes features that optimize the performance of the control plane, including:

• compatibility with high-performance dual- and quad-core processors for compute-intensive applications
• multi-terabit networking and 40Gbps throughput for high I/O bandwidth
• support for up to 32GB memory with Intel CPUs and up to 64GB with AMD CPUs, and a Memory I/O option for large memory capacity and low-latency memory performance
• power-efficient CPUs and straight-through cooling for cost savings
• compatibility with DS3000 portfolio with SAS drives and optional DC power for high-performance, high-capacity storage

Services Plane Performance

The new-generation telecommunications services that subscribers demand reside on the services plane, which includes applications such as:

• Multimedia Messaging/Short Message Services (MMS/SMS)
• Application services for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), VOIP, IPTV, VoD and Security
• Gaming
• Web hosting & caching
• Feature Servers
• Directory Services
• Parlay Gateway

The services planes requires extremely high performance to deliver the performance that paying subscribers demand. With the BladeCenter HT chassis from IBM, features that enhance the platform for the services plane for telecommunications include:

• high-performance compute performance with a variety of dual- and quad-core processors
• multi-terabit networking for a very high I/O bandwidth performance
• buffered memory modules and dedicated memory bandwidth for each CPU and HyperTransport I/O for high-speed point-to-point memory capacity and performance
• compatibility with power-efficient blade servers such as the low-voltage HS21 blade servers for Intel and the LS21 and LS41 blade servers for minimized power consumption costs
• support for the DS3000 disk storage systems with SAS drives & 4Gbps FB connectivity for high-performance, large-capacity storage

Start Configuring Your Blade Server Solution Today

North American Systems’ extensive IBM experience and experience with the Blade platform makes us an ideal partner to work with for those who are looking to pilot or expand their blade server projects and deployment. Our systems engineers can provide in-depth technical insight and expertise, to help you configure a system that meets business requirements while reducing infrastructure costs.

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