Businesses looking to pack even more processing power into their data centers now have access to the BL30p, HP’s densest blade server yet.

In talking up its blade business this week, HP announced that the dual-Xeon processor BL30p, unveiled in March, would start shipping this month. Pricing starts at just under $2,500.

Sixteen of the two-processor Xeon-based blades can fit into HP's 6U blade enclosure, compared with just eight of HP's previous dual-processor blade, the BL20p. As a comparison, 14 of IBM's dual-processor HS20 blades can fit into its 7U blade enclosure.

HP, which says it is the first vendor to sell more than 100,000 blades, also detailed plans to integrate VMware virtualization software into the BL20p and said it would introduce blades based on both AMD’s Opteron and Intel’s Itanium chip in the next year or so.

Eric French, network manager at The Greater Baltimore Medical Center, began deploying HP blades last year and is planning to bring in more blade systems going forward. He says he’s particularly interested in the BL30p because of the ability to put more processing power into smaller spaces in his data center.

“I like anything that saves floor space, because floor space is expensive,” he says.

HP slimmed down the blade by removing two hot-plug SCSI drives, which are available on the BL20p, and instead is offering an optional dual-port Fibre Channel slot for SAN connectivity. The blades are geared for users that want dense computing power, but minimal system storage, for tasks such as computational clusters and grid computing.

“I love what HP is doing. By virtualizing the storage - via the host bus adapter to a SAN - the potential for very high-density and relatively cheap server farms is a reality,” French says.

HP announced it is partnering with VMware to integrate server virtualization capabilities into the BL20p blades. A bundled offering that includes VMware ESX Server, Virtual Center and HP Gold or Platinum support is available now, starting at $4,800 per blade. A chassis of eight BL20p servers with the VMware software and HP support is also available now, starting at just under $49,500.