Chapter 1. Introduction
The IBM
®
ERserver BladeCenter
™
Type 8677 unit is based on IBM Enterprise
X-Architecture
™
technologies
1
.
YourBladeCenter 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.
YourBladeCenter 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/.
Youcan register the BladeCenter unit and blade servers on the World Wide Web.
Toregister, go to: http://www.ibm.com/pc/register/.
Record information about your BladeCenter unit in the following table. Youwill 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.
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2002, 2003 1