Bill Dickie

In a nutshell, the new HP Virtual Connect modules run Ethernet and Fibre Channel natively, "instead od using switches and interconnects," Bill Dickie, HP BladeSystem Interconnect Strategy Manager told ServerWatch.
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According to Dickie, "This is the largest beta program we've ever run, and we still had to turn people away."

He attributes much of the interest to the fact that, "none of the volume blade vendors have anything similar."

According to Bill Dicke, international strategy manager for the BladeSystem product line at HP, the Virtual Connect modules in the new c-Class boxes are one of the reasons why the new machines are so popular. More than 100 customers have been testing the devices before they shipped this week, and Dicke says that a number of them have decided to standardize on c-Class blade servers just because of this feature, which greatly simplifies the task of managing network and SAN connectivity for blades.

Like many technologies at HP, the Virtual Connect features of the c-Class blades is derived from technology developed for the NonStop fault tolerant server line from the formerly independent Tandem Computers, which was acquired by Compaq in 1996. The Virtual Connect modules, which are available for Ethernet links and Fibre Channel links today, do exactly what the name suggests: they virtualize this I/O. The idea is to wire servers, networks, and SANs once physically and then rewire virtually, using software inside the Virtual Connect module, from that point forward.

According to Dicke, the Virtual Connect modules solve a pesky problem that has inhibited the adoption of blade servers.
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"Now you can add or change servers, but the network and storage guys won't see any change," says Dicke.