Hi I currently need to replace one of my Compaq Proliant servers running Windows 2000 and Domino 6.5.2. My I.T. group is recommending that I go to an HP Blade server with SAN storage. I’m not familliar with this configuration for Domino and was wondering if this is a good choice or if I should just get another Proliant. We have less than 100 users although I may turn on mail journaling on the server.
I would appreciate any thoughts.
Subject: HP Blade Server w SAN Storage - Good Choice?
Disclaimer: I am an employee of HP, and even though I am not in our server group, you should not consider me to be an objective source of information on this. But, I can at least point you to some information that I hope you will find helpful so you can judge for yourself.
Some of my colleagues at HP recently published two NotesBench reports with results of testing the combination of an HP blade server and an HP EVA8000 SAN. There is a test with the 480c blade and a test with the 685c blade, in both cases with 8 CPU cores on the blade. These particular tests were done with the iNotes load, supporting workloads of more than 25,000 users. There is also a less recent test of the older BL20p G2 blade, supporting 5,500 users on the iNotes load; and a test of eight of the older BL20p G2 blades in one enclosure, supporting a total of 120,000 users on the regular Notes mail load. The blades in these latter two cases each had two hyper-threaded CPUs, and the storage systems were HP MAS1000 SANs.
Please bear in mind that these benchmarks are done with very high-end configurations and standard workloads, and are intended only for comparison purposes against other server solutions. Actual performance in any given customer enviroment will be different, depending on a very large number of variables in configurations and workload.
Of course, there is more to this decision than raw capabilities of blades and SAN storage, and you should consider the decision carefully to make the best choice between blades and stand-alone servers. However, I think that you will have no trouble confirming from these benchmark results that a properly configured HP blade server is certainly capable of meeting your needs.
Good luck with your implementation.
-rich