You can access the Onboard Administrator through a graphical Web-based user interface, a command-line interface, or the simple object access protocol (SOAP) to configure and monitor the enclosure.

You can add a second Onboard Administrator to provide redundancy.

The Onboard Administrator requires a password. For information on setting the Onboard Administrator Password, see “Setting the Onboard Administrator Password” (page 62).

1.2.4 Insight Display

The Insight Display is a small LCD panel on the front of an enclosure that provides instant access to important information about the enclosure such as the IP address and color-coded status.

Figure 1-10depicts the Insight Display.

Figure 1-10 Server Blade Insight Display

You can use the Insight Display panel to make some basic enclosure settings.

1.3 Server Blade Mezzanine Cards

The mezzanine slots on each server blade provide additional I/O capability.

Mezzanine cards are PCI-Express cards that attach inside the server blade through a special connector and have no physical I/O ports on them.

Card types include Ethernet, fibre channel, or 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

1.4 Server Blade Interconnect Modules

An interconnect module provides the physical I/O for the built-in NICs or the supplemental mezzanine cards on the server blades. An interconnect module can be either a switch or a pass-thru module.

A switch provides local switching and minimizes cabling. Switch models that are supported as interconnect modules include, but are not limited to:

•Nortel GbE2c Gigabit Ethernet switch

•Cisco Catalyst Gigabit Ethernet switch

•HP 4x DDR InfiniBand switch

•Brocade SAN switch

A pass-thru module provides direct connections to the individual ports on each node and does not provide any local switching.

Bays in the back of each enclosure correspond to specific interfaces on the server blades. Thus, all I/O devices that correspond to a specific interconnect bay must be the same type.

Interconnect Bay Port Mapping

Connections between the server blades and the interconnect bays are hard wired. Each of the 8 interconnect bays in the back of the enclosure has a connection to each of the 16 server bays in the front of the enclosure. The built-in NIC or mezzanine card into which the interconnect blade connects depends on which interconnect bay it is plugged into. Because full-height blades consume two server bays, they have twice as many connections to each of the interconnect bays.

28 Hardware and Network Overview