Abstract

Today’s blade server systems provide customers with platforms that can host many physical servers and potentially a hundred or more virtual servers. It is essential that these systems provide high-bandwidth connectivity in an any-to-any fashion across physical and virtual servers in order for customers to reap the benefits of blade-based virtualization and not encounter bandwidth-related application performance issues, particularly for I/O intensive applications such as ERP, CRM or database servers.

HP commissioned Tolly to benchmark the intra-chassis network throughput of its BladeSystem c7000 and compare that to a Cisco UCS 5100 system outfitted with comparable hardware.