Silicon Graphics Altix ICE 8000 Series, Quick Reference Manual

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Scali Manage TM On SGI
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Altix
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ICE System Quick Reference Guide
BIOS uses the preboot execution environment (PXE) to PXE boot and it is eth0 to the
Linux kernel.
The 10/100 Ethernet interface is accessible to the management interface (BMC) built
onto each compute blade. The operating system running on the blade cannot directly
access this 10/100 interface. It belongs to the processor on the BMC. Likewise, the
BMC cannot access the GigE interface.
Figure 1-5 on page 15 shows a more detailed view of the Chassis manager.
Figure 1-5
Chassis Manager
The chassis management control (CMC) blade has two embedded Ethernet switches .
One is a 24-port GigE switch and the other a 24-port 10/100 switch. The 10/100
switch is a sub-switch (hanging off one port of) the GigE switch.
The primary GigE interface from each of sixteen blades connects to the GigE switch
and the sixteen blade BMCs connect to the 10/100 switch. The GigE connections also
connect the service nodes, including service storage nodes.
The GigE switches in each IRU are "stacked" using a special stacking connection
between each IRU in a rack. This connection runs a special intra-switch protocol. All
switches in a rack are ganged together to form one large 96 port switch. The
connections from each CMC to another are labeled
UP
and
DN
as shown in Figure 1-5
on page 15. The switches are stacked in a ring so failure of one link still allows traffic
to flow in the opposite direction on the ring.
The processor on the CMC manages these switches effectively forming a large,
intelligent Ethernet switch. A VLAN mechanism runs on top of this network to allow
management control software to query port statistics and other port metrics including
the attached peer’s MAC address.
The CMC has five additional RJ45 connections on its front panel as shown in Figure
1-5 on page 15. The function of these jacks is, as follows:
007–5450–001 15