IBM BladeCenter S

Chapter 1. Introduction
The BladeCenter
®
S Type 8886 is a high-density, high-performance rack-mounted
server system. It supports up to six blade servers that can share common resources,
such as power, cooling, management, and I/O resources within a single
BladeCenter S chassis. In addition, it provides support for up to twelve 3.5-inch,
hot-swappable SAS or SATA hard disk drives or twenty-four 2.5-inch,
hot-swappable SAS hard disk drives.
The BladeCenter S system provides the following features:
v IBM Enterprise X-Architecture
®
Technology
IBM Enterprise X-Architecture Technology leverages proven innovative IBM
technologies to build powerful, scalable, and reliable blade servers. It provides
features such as IBM Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA) and real-time diagnostics.
v Server expansion capabilities
You can add up to six blade servers to the BladeCenter S chassis. Some blade
servers have connectors for additional optional devices that you can use to add
capabilities to the blade server. For example, you can connect either a storage
expansion unit or a PCI expansion unit to a blade server. Alternatively, you can
add optional I/O expansion cards to add network interfaces or storage through
I/O modules. SAS expansion cards provide access through SAS connectivity
modules or SAS RAID controller modules that are installed in I/O bays 3 and 4
to the hard disk drives in the BladeCenter S chassis.
Note: SAS connectivity modules support the use of SAS or SATA hard disk
drives. SAS RAID controller modules support the use of SAS hard disk drives
only.
v Hot-swap capabilities
Bays in the BladeCenter S chassis are hot-swappable. For example, you can add,
remove, or replace a blade server or a SAS or SATA hard disk drive without
removing power from the BladeCenter S chassis.
The midplane provides hot-pluggable connectors for the following components:
– Six blade servers
– Four I/O modules
– One advanced management module
– One serial pass-thru module
– Four power modules
– Four fan modules
– Two disk storage modules
– One media tray
v High-availability design
Components in the BladeCenter S system enable continued operation if one of
the components fails:
– Power modules. In normal operation, the power modules provide power to
share the system load. If a power module fails, the working power modules
can continue to handle the entire load. You can replace a power module
without shutting down the BladeCenter S system.
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