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IBM 8687 Installation Guide - Page 97

Serial connections, 3.3 Storage considerations

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If the RXE-100 has the second set of six PCI slots installed, use the short interconnect management cable (supplied with the PCI slot option kit) to connect Management A (out) Port to Management B (in) Port (see Figure 3-9 on page 81). Important: In the publication IBM RXE-100 Remote Expansion Enclosure Installation Guide, the section entitled "Attaching the enclosure to an xSeries 440 server" does not include instructions to connect the ports Management A (out) and Management B (in) on the RXE-100. Our testing in the lab indicates that this additional cable is necessary. The 8 m interconnect management cable is suitable for inter-rack configurations. For 16-way configurations, the management ports must be connected as shown in Figure 3-10 on page 82. An additional cable will need to be ordered. Important: Power to the RXE-100 is controlled by the x440, via the interconnect management cable and under the control of the Remote Supervisor Adapter. 3.2.4 Serial connections The x440 does not have an external serial port. If a serial port is required (for example, for UPS remote management), then a USB-to-serial adapter is required, such as the Belkin USB to Serial Adapter (part number 10K3661). Restriction: IBM USB Serial/Parallel Adapter (part number 22P5298) is not supported in the x440. It is also possible to configure the serial port on the Remote Supervisor Adapter to be sharable between the alerting functions of the adapter and the operating system. However, we recommend that you use a separate serial port. 3.3 Storage considerations When you are planning the storage configuration to accompany the x440, there are important performance and sizing issues that need to be considered. The two internal hot-swap 1" drive bays will typically be used for operating system installation. We recommended these drives be configured as a two-drive RAID-1 array to provide a higher degree of system availability. Drives up to Chapter 3. Planning 83

Section	Page
Front cover	1
Contents	5
Notices	9
Trademarks	10
Preface	11
The team that wrote this redbook	11
Become a published author	14
Comments welcome	14
Chapter 1. Technical description	15
1.1 The x440 product line	16
1.2 System partitioning	20
1.3 IBM XA-32 chipset	21
1.4 Processors	26
1.4.1 Intel Xeon Processor MP	27
1.4.2 Intel Xeon Processor DP	30
1.5 SMP Expansion Module	31
1.6 IBM XceL4 Server Accelerator Cache	33
1.7 System memory	33
1.8 PCI subsystem	37
1.9 Redundancy	38
1.10 Light Path Diagnostics	39
1.11 Remote Supervisor Adapter	41
1.12 Operating system support	42
1.13 IBM Director	44
Chapter 2. Positioning	49
2.1 xSeries 440 application solutions	50
2.1.1 Server consolidation	50
2.1.2 Enterprise applications	52
2.1.3 Infrastructure applications	54
2.1.4 Clustering	55
2.2 Why choose the x440	57
2.2.1 IBM XA-32 chipset	57
2.2.2 Intel Xeon MP and DP processors	58
2.2.3 XceL4 Server Accelerator Cache	60
2.2.4 High-performance memory subsystem	60
2.2.5 Active PCI-X	61
2.2.6 XpandOnDemand scalability	61
2.2.7 System Partition Manager	62
2.3 The benefits of system partitioning	63
2.4 Server consolidation	65
2.4.1 Types of server consolidation	65
2.4.2 Why consolidate servers	71
2.4.3 Benefits from server consolidation	71
Chapter 3. Planning	77
3.1 System hardware	78
3.1.1 Processors	78
3.1.2 Memory	79
3.1.3 PCI slot configuration	82
3.1.4 Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet controller	86
3.2 Cabling and connectivity	88
3.2.1 SMP Expansion Module connectivity	88
3.2.2 Remote Supervisor Adapter connectivity	91
3.2.3 Remote Expansion Enclosure	92
3.2.4 Serial connections	97
3.3 Storage considerations	97
3.3.1 xSeries storage solutions	98
3.3.2 Disk subsystem performance	102
3.3.3 Tape backup	103
3.4 Server partitioning and consolidation	104
3.5 Operating system considerations	104
3.5.1 Windows 2000 Datacenter Server	106
3.5.2 Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition	109
3.5.3 Microsoft Windows 2000 Server	110
3.5.4 Microsoft Windows .NET Server	111
3.5.5 Novell NetWare	111
3.5.6 Red Hat/SuSE Linux	111
3.5.7 VMware ESX Server	112
3.6 Application considerations	114
3.6.1 Scalability and performance considerations	114
3.6.2 SMP and server types	115
3.7 Rack installation	116
3.8 Power considerations	117
3.9 Solution Assurance Review	118
Chapter 4. Installation	121
4.1 System BIOS settings	122
4.1.1 Updating BIOS and firmware	122
4.1.2 Enabling memory mirroring	122
4.1.3 Enabling Hyper-Threading	123
4.2 Device drivers	125
4.3 Operating system installation	125
4.3.1 Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server	126
4.3.2 Red Hat Linux installation	133
4.3.3 NetWare installation	135
4.3.4 VMware ESX Server	142
4.4 Additional Information	142
Chapter 5. Management	143
5.1 Active PCI Manager	144
5.1.1 Using Active PCI Manager	146
5.1.2 Adding adapters to the system	150
5.1.3 Analyzing an existing configuration	158
5.2 System Partition Manager	164
5.3 Process Control	169
5.3.1 Process alias rules	170
5.3.2 Process execution rules	174
5.3.3 Group process execution rules	175
Abbreviations and acronyms	187
Related publications	189
IBM Redbooks	189
Referenced Web sites	189
How to get IBM Redbooks	192
IBM Redbooks collections	192
Index	193