IBM 8677 manual Introduction, This Installation and User’s Guide provides information to

Chapter 1. Introduction

The IBM® ERserver BladeCenter™ Type 8677 unit is based on IBM Enterprise

X-Architecture™technologies1.

Your BladeCenter unit is a high-density, high-performance rack-mounted server system developed for medium-to-large businesses. It supports up to 14 blade servers, making it ideally suited for networking environments that require a large number of high-performance servers in a small amount of space. The BladeCenter system provides common resources that are shared by the blade servers, such as power, cooling, system management, network connections, and I/O (diskette drive, CD-ROM drive, ports for USB, keyboard, video, mouse, and network interfaces). The use of common resources enables small size in the blade servers, enables minimal cabling, and eliminates resources sitting idle.

Performance, ease of use, reliability, and expansion capabilities were key considerations during the design of your BladeCenter system. These design features make it possible for you to customize the system hardware to meet your needs today, while providing flexible expansion capabilities for the future.

This Installation and User’s Guide provides information to:

vSet up and cable your BladeCenter unit

vStart and configure your BladeCenter unit

vInstall options

vPerform basic troubleshooting of your BladeCenter unit

The latest version of this publication is available from the IBM Support Web site at http://www.ibm.com/pc/support/.

Packaged with the Installation and User’s Guide are software CDs that help you to configure and manage the BladeCenter unit.

This Installation and User’s Guide and other publications that provide detailed information about your BladeCenter unit are provided in Portable Document Format (PDF) on the IBM BladeCenter Documentation CD.

Your BladeCenter unit comes with a three-year limited warranty. You can obtain up-to-date information about your BladeCenter Type 8677 model and other IBM server products at http://www.ibm.com/eserver/xseries/.

You can register the BladeCenter unit and blade servers on the World Wide Web. To register, go to: http://www.ibm.com/pc/register/.

Record information about your BladeCenter unit in the following table. You will need this information when you register your BladeCenter unit with IBM.

1.Enterprise X-Architecture technology takes full advantage of existing IBM technologies to build powerful, scalable, and reliable Intel processor-based servers. For more information about IBM Enterprise X-Architecture, go to http://www.ibm.com/pc/us/eserver/xseries/xarchitecture/index.html.

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