BladeCenter® S unit is the first chassis that combines blade servers, storage
and switches into a single, easy-to-use platform, while maintaining the open
nature of BladeCenter chassis design. Having all the components within a single
chassis helps you simplify space, power, cooling and cabling needs for your
IT infrastructure.
The BladeCenter S unit can deliver an IT solution that saves time and reduces the complexity of deploying servers and storage. The BladeCenter S provides:
Now, with servers, storage and switches all in one chassis you can consider BladeCenter to be a "business or branch office in a box".
Each BladeCenter S platform can support up to six blade servers.
In addition, each chassis can contain up to two storage modules. Each storage module can support a maximum of six SAS, or Serial Attached SCSI, hard drives or six SATA (serial ATA) drives.
A media tray for shared resource provides two light path diagnostics LEDs, a read/write CD/DVD-ROM drive, and two USB ports.
Light path diagnostics LEDs help you perform problem determination tasks using LED indicators. For additional usability, the same light path diagnostics LED display seen on the front media tray is displayed on the back of the chassis.
One advanced management module is shipped in I/O bay 5. In addition, the BladeCenter S chassis has room to add up to five additional, optional I/O modules.
Other optional accessories include serial connections for pass-through communications to each blade server.
So, what else connects the blade servers to the storage drives? The SAS expansion card for IBM BladeCenter, typically installed with each blade server, routes data through network switches, also known as the IBM BladeCenter SAS connectivity modules.
IBM BladeCenter SAS connectivity modules can be installed in I/O bays three and four. Only one SAS connectivity module is required for storage communications. However, for redundancy, you can choose to install two SAS connectivity modules.
Finally, easy-to-read and informative BladeCenter S unit service cards provide valuable shortcuts as well as a place to document information that is unique to your BladeCenter S setup. These service cards are located next to your storage disks and can be accessed by removing the front cover of the unit.
So, how does the BladeCenter S unit manage storage and data management tasks?
When your application data arrives at the BladeCenter S chassis, it arrives at the Ethernet switch located in I/O bay one. The Ethernet switch routes your application data to the appropriate blade servers for processing. After the data has been processed by the servers, it can be stored on one or more of the individual blade servers or on one or more of the storage drives.
In this example, your application data is not stored on the individual blade
servers.
Instead, application data is routed from the servers through the internal
IBM SAS expansion card for IBM BladeCenter, which provides the SAS protocol
to the IBM BladeCenter SAS connectivity modules.
Next the SAS connectivity modules, located in bays three and four, route the application data to the assigned storage drives. Your data is placed on the storage drives based on previously assigned storage configurations.
To manage your BladeCenter S unit, end-to-end management tools, including Advanced Management Module, Storage Configuration Manager and IBM® Director and ServerGuide™ guide you step-by-step through configuration process and also help you maintain your system.
The Advanced Management Module provides basic functionality to manage hardware on a specific chassis. Use this tool to remotely turn the blade servers on and off, remotely access blade servers at the operating system level and to display lists of hardware and firmware information. In addition, Advanced Management Module offers predefined storage-zoning configuration for the storage modules.
For full configuration capability, you can use browser-based Storage Configuration Manager software to monitor and manage multiple BladeCenter S unit functions, including SAS zoning and space management. SAS zoning is the creation of paths that enable data to travel among the BladeCenter server and the storage disks. Storage Configuration Manager can be installed either as part of IBM Director or as a stand-alone application.
With Storage Configuration Manager, simply select the drives that you would like each blade server to access. Then, Storage Configuration Manager creates the appropriate routing and zoning automatically.
For even more flexibility, use IBM Director to monitor the usage and performance of critical components, such as processors, disks and memory on multiple remote systems, including multiple BladeCenter systems. IBM Director enables you to automate many of your management and software-update functions. For a more-seamless user interface IBM Director enables you to integrate management applications, such as Storage Configuration Manager, as IBM Director plug-ins.
After you have configured your network switches and completed SAS zoning, use IBM ServerGuide to simplify the installation of Microsoft® Windows® operating systems for blade servers. You can use IBM ServerGuide for the following tasks:
Now you know that BladeCenter S servers, storage and switches are shipped within a single chassis, thus helping you simplify your IT infrastructure for space, power, cooling and cabling.
The BladeCenter S unit is designed with “hot swappable” components to help minimize server downtime and a BladeCenter S unit can be managed with end-to-end integrated systems management tools such as Advanced Management Module, Storage Configuration Manager and IBM® Director, and IBM ServerGuide and BladeCenter S service cards.
The IBM Systems Information Center provides you with up-to-date and accurate
planning deployment, physical space and configuration knowledge.
For additional ease-of-use, planning worksheets are available to download
for offline planning.