IBM eServer BladeCenter 8677, Installation And User Manual

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Chapter 1. Introduction
The IBM
®
ERserver
BladeCenter
™
Type 8677 unit is based on IBM Enterprise
X-Architecture
™
technologies
1
.
Your BladeCenter unit is a high-density, high-performance rack-mounted server
system developed for medium-to-large businesses. It supports up to 14 blade
servers, making it ideally suited for networking environments that require a large
number of high-performance servers in a small amount of space. The BladeCenter
system provides common resources that are shared by the blade servers, such as
power, cooling, system management, network connections, and I/O (diskette drive,
CD-ROM drive, ports for USB, keyboard, video, mouse, and network interfaces).
The use of common resources enables small size in the blade servers, enables
minimal cabling, and eliminates resources sitting idle.
Performance, ease of use, reliability, and expansion capabilities were key
considerations during the design of your BladeCenter system. These design
features make it possible for you to customize the system hardware to meet your
needs today, while providing flexible expansion capabilities for the future.
This Installation and User’s Guide provides information to:
v Set up and cable your BladeCenter unit
v Start and configure your BladeCenter unit
v Install options
v
Perform basic troubleshooting of your BladeCenter unit
The latest version of this publication is available from the IBM Web site. Complete
the following steps to display a list of publications for your BladeCenter.
1. From http://www.ibm.com, click Support & downloads .
2. Click Search technical support .
3. In the Enter PC machine type and model field, type 8677 and click Submit .
4. On the left side of the “BladeCenter 8677 support” page, click Online
publications .
5. From the Online publication by category menu, select the category of
publications you want to display.
Packaged with the Installation and User’s Guide are software CDs that help you to
configure and manage the BladeCenter unit.
This Installation and User’s Guide and other publications that provide detailed
information about your BladeCenter are provided in Portable Document Format
(PDF) on the IBM
BladeCenter Documentation CD.
Your BladeCenter unit comes with a three-year limited warranty. If you have access
to the World Wide Web, you can obtain up-to-date information about your
BladeCenter Type 8677 model and other IBM server products at
http://www.ibm.com/eserver/xseries/.
1. Enterprise X-Architecture technology takes full advantage of existing IBM technologies to build powerful, scalable, and reliable Intel
processor-based servers. For more information about IBM Enterprise X-Architecture, go to
http://www.ibm.com/pc/us/eserver/xseries/xarchitecture/index.html.
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2002
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