Chapter 6

Reliability and Serviceability Features

Reliability, availability, and serviceability are key requirements for platforms running business-critical application services. In today’s globally competitive environment, where users access applications round-the-clock, downtime is unacceptable and can result in lost customers, revenue, and reputation. The BladeSymphony 1000 is designed with a number of features intended to increase the uptime of the system.

Reliability Features

Intended to execute core business operations, the BladeSymphony 1000’s modular design increases reliability through the high availability of redundant components. Rather than focus on creating individual highly available components, the BladeSymphony 1000 utilizes multiple industry-standard components to cost-effectively increase reliability. Redundant components also increase the serviceability of the system by allowing the system to continue operating while new components are added or failed components are replaced.

The BladeSymphony 1000 is designed with features to help ensure the system does not crash due to a failure and to minimize the effects from a failure. These features are listed in Table 11.

 

Table 11: Reliability features

 

 

 

Function

 

Feature

 

 

 

Quickly detect/diagnose failed part

 

BIOS self-diagnostic function

 

 

Memory scrubbing function (Intel Itanium Server Blade)

 

 

Failure recovery by retry and correc-

ECC function (memory, CPU bus, SMP link (Intel Itanium

tion

 

Server Blade), CRC retry function (PCIe, SCSI)

 

 

 

Dynamic isolation of failed part

 

Advanced ECC, online spare memory

 

 

 

Redundant configurations

 

HDD Modules, redundant Switch & Management Modules,

 

 

Power Modules, and Cooling Fan Modules

 

 

Memory mirroring (Intel Xeon Server Blades)

 

 

 

Redundant system configurations

 

Redundant LAN/FC modules

 

 

Cluster system configuration, N+1/N+M configurations

 

 

 

Obtain failure information

 

Isolation of failed part using System Event Log, BladeSym-

 

 

phony Management Suite, and Storage Manager

 

 

Automatic notification of failure by ASSIST via email

 

 

 

Block failed part

 

Isolation of failed part upon system boot

 

 

 

Repair failed part during operation

 

Repair CPI adapter, Switch & Management Module, Power

 

 

Module, Cooling Fan Module while system is operating

 

 

 

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Hitachi 1000 manual Reliability and Serviceability Features, Reliability Features, Reliability features