HP officially announced today an update to their BL2x220c blade server line.  Although the primary purpose for this update was to introduce the Intel Xeon 5500 Series processor to the server line, there are additional significant enhancements as well (shown below in bold:

• Up to two Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® 5500 sequence processors
• Up to 48 GB (6 x 8 GB) of memory, supported by (6) slots of PC2-5300 Registered DIMMs, 1066Mhz
• 1 non-hot plug small form factor SATA or Solid State hard drive
• Embedded Dual-port NC326i Gigabit Server Adapter
• One (1) I/O expansion slots via mezzanine card
• One (1) internal USB 2.0 connector for security key devices and USB drive keys
• Supported ONLY in c7000 Chassis

For those of you not familiar with the BL2x220 Blade Server, I think it is one of HP’s best kept secret.  This blade server is an awesome feet of design because it is not just 1 server, it is 2 servers in 1 blade case – in a clam shell design (see below).  This means that in a HP C7000 BladeSystem chassis you could have 32 servers!    That’s 64 CPUs, 256 CORES, 3TB of RAM all in a 10U rack space.  That’s pretty impressive.

For more details on this new server, I encourage you to visit the QuickSpecs website at http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/3709945-3709945-3328410-241641-3722790-4047584.html