HP's clusters-in-a-can now come equipped with cClass blades.

Customers can purchase a Cluster Platform Express system with up to 48 nodes comprised of Xeon- and Opteron-based blade servers. HP also has both Infiniband and Gigabit Ethernet available for networking with these systems.

HP, and its main rivals, have been selling pre-packaged clusters for the last few years. The vendors claim to make life easier on customers by doing much of the cluster assembly and configuration work in-house and then shipping out a more complete package.

The Express version of HP's clusters center on just one-rack of systems, as opposed to the Unified Cluster line, which can combine hundreds of boxes.

HP offers a handy web site for configuring the Express systems, allowing customers to pick from the blades or thin servers. HP also offers a broad range of operating systems with the clusters, including various flavors of Red Hat, SUSE and Windows. ®

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