Introduction
Power Supplies
The Network 9000 power supply system is designed so that you can add power supplies as
your network needs grow. Some configurations permit you to configure power supplies for
redundancy and "hot-swapping," to ensure a constant supply of power to the modules in the
chassis. When more than one Network 9000 power supply is installed in a chassis, the
supplies will share the load.
The Midplane
The midplane is central to the operation of the modules in the Network 9000 chassis. The
midplane is a hardware component in the middle of the chassis which joins the processor
modules and an I/O modules for each product. The Getting Started guides for each product
explain how to install the the separate modules. In addition to providing the physical
connections for the processor modules and I/O modules, the midplane supports the
following features which add flexibility and performance to the Network 9000 Intra-
Networking Hub:
•
The Local Management Bus (LMB)
The Local Management Bus (LMB) transports management information among the
chassis slots, and to the control storage of the chassis. It also allows you to monitor the
status of modules and power supplies. While the LMB provides the means of
communication among the different components of the chassis, it operates automatically
and needs no control or maintenance from users. When you enter a chassis management
command and specify a remote slot in the chassis, for example, the LMB automatically
transports the information to the target slot.
•
Multiple Ethernet
™
Segments
The midplane of a Network 9000 chassis supports three independent Ethernet segments:
segment A, segment B, and segment C. These separate segments allow you segregate
network traffic for different user groups, and reduce congestion on the network. Most
Network 9000 modules can connect to Ethernet segments A, B, or C. A few Network 9000
modules, and MAXserver family cards installed in a Network 9000 chassis can connect to
Ethernet segment A only.
Control Storage
The AC input module includes an area of memory which contains information about each
slot in the chassis, called control storage. The control storage maintains the information
that the processor modules use at initialization time to load software and parameters, as
well as other slot-specific information. The section on Managing Initialization Records
later in this chapter explains more about the information in control storage.
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