Bull Novascale Blade BL465, Installation And User Manual, Page: 27 / 128

Chapter 1. Introduction
13
mportant
If you install the primary blade server in blade server bay 7 of the chassis, the
secondary blade server is installed in blade server bay 8, which means that the
primary blade server receives power from power domain 1 of the chassis and the
secondary blade server receives power from power domain 2 of the chassis. The
following situations can occur if there is a power loss to either power domain,
depending on how the BL465 complex is implemented:
− If it is implemented in single partition mode, a loss of power to power domain 1 or
power domain 2 will result in both servers in the blade going down.
− If it is implemented in stand-alone mode, a loss of power to power domain 1 will
result in the entire blade going down. A loss of power to power domain 2 will
result in the blade server installed in blade server bay 8 going down, but the blade
server installed in blade server bay 7 will continue to function
With FlexNode processing, you can toggle between single partition mode and stand-alone
mode without having to modify the physical setup of the blade servers. To toggle between
modes, use the advanced management module Web interface
.
For example, assume that you have created a BL465 complex and defined that server as a
single partition through the advanced management module Web interface:
•
You can toggle the BL465 complex to stand-alone mode through the Web interface. In
stand-alone mode, you can install a different operating system on each blade server
and run different applications on each blade server.
• Then, you can toggle the BL465 complex back to a single partition and run
applications that take advantage of up to 4 processors and 32 DIMMs. The operating
system that is in use is the operating system of the primary blade server.
•
Later, you can toggle the BL465 complex back to stand-alone mode again to gain
access to the operating system on the secondary blade server.
1.7.1 Single Partition Mode Considerations
The following considerations apply to the BL465 complex that operates as a single
hardware partition:
• All UEFI settings (set through the Setup utility) should be the same on both blade slots.
If they are not, the settings that are defined for the primary blade server replace the
UEFI settings on the secondary server.
Note When you upgrade the firmware for the blade servers operating in single
partition mode, you only have to upgrade the primary blade server. The
firmware on the secondary blade server is automatically updated. See Using
the Setup Utility on page 66 for more information about the Setup utility.
• The primary blade server has access to the SSDs on the secondary blade server.
However, the SSDs on the primary blade server cannot be combined with the SSDs on
the secondary blade server to form a single RAID array. RAID arrays can be formed
only using the SSDs within a blade server.