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Chapter 3. Planning

59

Hot-swappable and redundant components provide high availability for the

FAStT200 Storage Server. A fan or a power supply failure will not cause

downtime and such faults can be fixed while the system remains operational. The

same is true for a disk drive failure if fault-tolerant RAID levels are used. With two

RAID controller units and proper cabling, a RAID controller or path failure will not

cause loss of access to data.

Each RAID controller has one host and one drive FC connection. The FAStT200

HA model can use the two host and drive connections to provide redundant

connection to the host adapters and to EXP500 enclosures. Each RAID

controller unit also contains 128 MB of battery-backup cache.

The IBM TotalStorage FAStT500 Storage Server

The FAStT500 Storage Server is a 4U rack-mountable Fibre Channel RAID

controller device. It provides the levels of performance, availability, and

expandability needed to satisfy high-end storage requirements. You would

typically use the FAStT500 Storage Server in advanced cluster environments

and possibly with heterogeneous operating systems running on the host

systems. Another application would be where multiple servers are being

consolidated onto one or more x450 systems and there is a requirement to

centralize storage for these systems.

The FAStT500 Storage Server features two RAID controller units, redundant

power supplies, and fans. All these components are hot-swappable, which

ensures excellent system availability. You use the EXP500 external storage

expansion enclosures to install the FC disk drives and you can connect up to 22

EXP500 enclosures to the FAStT500. This means a total of up to 220 disk drives.

The enclosures can be connected in a fully redundant manner, which provides a

very high level of availability. On the host-side FC connections, you can use up to

four mini-hubs.

This allows you to establish up to eight host connections without needing an

external hub or a switch. For performance and availability, each RAID controller

unit contains 256 MB of battery-backed cache and this amount can be further

expanded.

The IBM TotalStorage FAStT700 Storage Server

The FAStT700 Storage Server is the newest addition to the FAStT range of

products. As with the FAStT 500 Storage Server, you would typically implement

Tip:

The FAStT200 ships with IBM FAStT Storage Manager 7.10. When we

wrote this redbook, there was no Storage Manager version for IA-64

architecture. When available, you can download the latest version for IA-64

from

http://www.pc.ibm.com/support

.

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 x450 product line	16
1.2 IBM XA-64 chipset	17
1.3 Extensible Firmware Interface	19
1.3.1 GUID Partition Table disk	21
1.3.2 EFI System Partition	22
1.3.3 EFI and legacy-free concept	24
1.4 Intel Itanium 2 processor	24
1.5 System assembly	27
1.5.1 Memory-board assembly	28
1.5.2 Processor-board assembly	29
1.6 IBM XceL4 Server Accelerator Cache	31
1.7 System memory	31
1.8 PCI subsystem	35
1.9 Redundancy	37
1.10 Light path diagnostics	39
1.11 Remote Supervisor Adapter	40
1.12 Operating system support	41
Chapter 2. Positioning	43
2.1 x450 application solutions	44
2.1.1 Database applications	44
2.1.2 Business logic	46
2.1.3 e-business and security transactions	47
2.1.4 In-house developed compute-intensive applications	48
2.1.5 Science and technology industries	49
2.2 Why choose x450?	49
Chapter 3. Planning	53
3.1 System hardware	54
3.1.1 Processors	54
3.1.2 Memory	55
3.1.3 PCI slot configuration	58
3.1.4 Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet controller	61
3.2 Cabling and connectivity	62
3.2.1 Remote Supervisor Adapter connectivity	64
3.2.2 Remote Expansion Enclosure	65
3.2.3 Serial connections	69
3.3 Storage considerations	70
3.3.1 xSeries storage solutions	70
3.3.2 Tape backup	75
3.4 Rack installation	76
3.5 Power considerations	77
3.6 Solution Assurance Review	78
Chapter 4. Installation	81
4.1 Using the Extensible Firmware Interface	82
4.1.1 The EFI shell	84
4.1.2 Flash update	94
4.1.3 Configuration and Setup utility	97
4.1.4 Diagnostic utility	98
4.1.5 Boot maintenance menu	99
4.2 Installing Windows Server 2003	100
4.2.1 Overall process	101
4.2.2 Microsoft Reserved Partition	102
4.2.3 Windows installation	103
4.2.4 Pre-installation phase	103
4.2.5 Starting the installation	104
4.2.6 Text-mode setup	105
4.2.7 GUI setup	107
4.2.8 Post-setup phase	107
4.3 Installing SuSE Linux Enterprise Server	112
4.3.1 Background	113
4.3.2 Linux IA-64 kernel overview	114
4.3.3 Choosing a Linux distribution	115
4.3.4 Installing SuSE Linux Enterprise Server	117
4.3.5 Linux boot process	121
4.3.6 Information about the installed system	122
4.3.7 Using the serial port for the Linux console	126
4.3.8 RXE-100 Expansion Enclosure	127
4.3.9 Upgrading drivers	128
Chapter 5. Management	131
5.1 The Remote Supervisor Adapter	132
5.1.1 The Remote Supervisor Adapter	133
5.1.2 Connecting via a Web browser	133
5.1.3 Configuring a static IP address	135
5.1.4 Connecting via the ASM interconnect	138
5.1.5 Installing the device driver	139
5.1.6 Configuring the remote control password	139
5.2 Management using the Remote Supervisor Adapter	140
5.2.1 Configuring which alerts to monitor	140
5.2.2 Configuring SNMP	141
5.2.3 Sending alerts directly to IBM Director	142
5.2.4 Creating a test event action plan in IBM Director	144
Related publications	149
IBM Redbooks	149
Referenced Web sites	149
How to get IBM Redbooks	151
IBM Redbooks collections	151
Index	153

IBM 86884RX Installation Guide - Page 73

The IBM TotalStorage FAStT500 Storage Server

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