21
CHAPTER 3: Installation
3.3.2 C
ASCADED
W
IZARD
MP S
YSTEMS FOR
M
ORE
T
HAN
F
OUR
CPU
S
Multiple ServSwitch Wizard MPs can be cascaded (connected together in a one-to-
many scheme) in order to increase the maximum number of available CPU ports
in your KVM-switching system. (Note that
each
Wizard MP in a cascade
must
be
powered through a power supply and
not
from the keyboard interface.)
You can include regular ServSwitch Wizards, ServSwitch Wizard LPs, ServSwitch
Wizard Pros, and ServSwitch Duos in ServSwitch Wizard MP cascades, although
your cabling will be more complicated. We don’t recommend including Duos,
however, unless a single ServSwitch Duo is the “master” switch for your cascade.
This is because users attached to two or more Duos in the same cascade might see
the same CPUs as having different CPU numbers, and might have to use different
commands to access them. On the other hand, we don’t recommend using
anything but a ServSwitch Wizard MP as the master switch if there are any Sun
computers attached to your cascade, or if audio I/O is a must. Call Black Box for
technical support if you need to install such a mixed daisychain.
To install a cascade (assuming all switches are Wizard MPs):
Make sure that your master ServSwitch Wizard MP—the chassis that your
monitor, keyboard, mouse, and audio devices will be attached to—is unplugged
and powered down. If possible, turn off and unplug all of the devices that you want
to attach to this Wizard MP. (If you have to “hot-plug” any powered computers into
your Wizard MP system, see
Section 5.9
.)
Connect your user equipment (keyboard, PS/2 mouse, monitor, and audio
devices) to the appropriate “control port” connectors on the master Wizard MP’s
rear panel, as described in
Section 3.3.1
.
Now connect a layer of as many as four “subsidiary” Wizard MPs to your master
Wizard MP by running Wizard MP Cables (see
Section 3.3.3
) from the master
Wizard MP’s “CPU ports” to the subsidiary switches’ control ports. It doesn’t matter
which type of Wizard MP Cable you use, but we recommend using Sun cable if
you’re using a Sun keyboard or if you’ll be attaching any Sun CPUs. Connect the
various Cable strands to the corresponding control-port connectors.
You can extend your cascade to a third layer by repeating the process and
attaching additional subsidiary Wizard MPs to the subsidiary Wizard MPs already
attached to your master Wizard MP chassis. Though it’s theoretically possible to
cascade Wizard MPs to four, five, or more layers, we recommend that you limit
your setup to three, because the addresses you need to enter to switch CPU
channels become ridiculously long. If you need to connect that many computers,
use a more powerful KVM switch such as our ServSwitch™ Affinity or ServSwitch™
Multi.
