Components on the Front of a Cell
Cells
A cell contains the physical resources of the system: instruction processors, memory, input/output devices, peripheral storage devices, management board, fans, power supplies, EXPRESSSCOPE® Monitor, and so on. Each system comprises one to four cells.
Maintenance LAN (MLAN)
The maintenance LAN (MLAN) connects the internal components of the system.
Partition
A partition is a combination of one to four cells that runs a single instance of an operating system or virtual machine monitor. The operating system can be Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, or any supported Windows operating system. The virtual machine monitor can be VMware ESX or Xen. You can purchase the operating system or virtual machine monitor from NEC or supply it yourself.
A system comprises a minimum of one and a maximum of four partitions.
Service Processor
Each cell has an internal management board. For each partition, one of the partition’s management boards serves as the Service Processor. (Other management boards in the partition are called satellite management controllers.) A Service Processor manages and maintains the partition, monitors the system for hardware problems, and allows you to repartition the system.
The system’s management firmware resides on flash memory on the management board and provides the Service Processor functionality. Using a Web browser, you connect to the remote console interface to maintain, monitor, and repartition the system. The management board also includes the BIOS and Console Manager firmware.
Network Components
Your network environment can include the following components.
Public LAN
The public LAN is the customer’s internal production network that connects the servers, workstations, and so forth of an enterprise. It is sometimes referred to as the enterprise LAN.
