HP has announced a blade for its BladeSystem c-Class chassis that contains antiquated Direct-Attached Storage (DAS). This new storage blade can only be used by a single processing blade. Enterprises of all sizes should shrug and walk away from this reduction in capabilities offered by the HP SB40c storage blade.

A Step Backwards

One of the advantages offered by blade architectures is the ability to easily separate the storage from the processing. This allows migration to an agile, utility-based architecture. While processing blades are available with storage on the blade itself, enterprises are moving toward Storage Area Network (SAN)/Network-Attached Storage (NAS) and boot-from-network capabilities. This reduces the interdependence between the physical processor and the physical storage.

The introduction of a storage blade by HP for its BladeSystem c-Class chassis perpetuates the problems found with many tower or rack-mount servers