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CAUTION: Never place your hand inside an empty card or module bay. You should never have cause
to place a hand anywhere inside the Topspin 360 chassis. Unused card and module bays should always
have a Topspin 360 blanking panel over the bay to ensure proper safety, ventilation, and cooling.
Controller Cards
Controller cards manage the Topspin 360 and provide Ethernet and Serial Console port access to the
Server Switch. You can install controller cards in slots 1 and 14 of the Topspin 360. Figure 2-1 displays
the Topspin 360 controller card.
Figure 2-1: Topspin 360 Controller Card
The following points apply to the controller cards:
• Each Topspin 360 comes with one active controller and one warm standby controller.
• Upon power-up of the Topspin 360, slot 1 is the master (active). Slot 14 is the standby.
• The startup configuration file can be synchronized between the active and the standby controllers.
The CLI prompts users to synchronize the controllers.
• When the master controller fails or reboots, the standby controller automatically takes over as the
new master. All I/O cards (Switch cards, Fibre Channel gateways and Ethernet gateways) reboot
when a failover occurs.
• Users can force a fail-over with the Element Manager GUI (Maintenance > Reboot) or
command-line interface (reload command).
• The software upgrade/install process upgrades both the master controller and the standby controller
at the same time. You do not need to upgrade them separately.
• A subnet manager runs on each controller card. The SM can manage a single Topspin 360 or
redundant Topspin 360s.

Install a Controller Card

To install a controller card, perform the following steps:
1. Ground yourself appropriately.
2. Remove the blanking panel if one resides in the slot.