Abstract

IBM commissioned The Tolly Group to evaluate the competitive price/performance of its IBM eServer BladeCenter outfitted with eight 2.0-GHz server blades and an integrated Nortel Networks Layer 2-7 Ethernet switch module.

The Tolly Group compared the price/performance of the eServer BladeCenter with integrated Layer 2-7 switch module against two other blade server solutions: the IBM eServer BladeCenter with an integrated Layer 2 switch module and an external Nortel Networks Alteon Application Switch 2216 (hereafter IBM External), and an HP ProLiant BL p-Class blade server solution outfitted with eight 2.8-GHz server blades, an integrated Layer 2 switch module, and an external Nortel Networks Alteon Application Switch 2216 (hereafter HP External).

Engineers generated Layer 4 traffic to measure the maximum session-per-second rate for all the solutions under test. The performance results and the total cost per solution were used to quantify each solution’s session-rate price-performance value. Testing was performed in November 2003.