User guide

Chapter 1. IBM BladeCenter products and technology 5
Figure 1-4 Diagram of BladeCenter H rear view showing the key features of the BladeCenter H chassis
The BladeCenter H chassis allows for either 14 single-slot blade servers or seven double-slot
blade servers. However, you can mix different blade server models in one chassis to meet
your requirements.
The BladeCenter H chassis ships standard with one Advanced Management Module. This
module provides the ability to manage the chassis and well as providing the local KVM
function. The optional redundant Advanced Management Module provides the IBM
BladeCenter H with higher levels of resiliency. This module provides administrators with easy
remote management and connectivity to the BladeCenter H chassis.
The BladeCenter has bays for 10 hot-swap I/O modules. You choose these I/O modules
based on your connectivity needs. An Ethernet Switch Module (ESM) is required in I/O
module bays 1 and 2, to enable the use of both Ethernet ports on a Blade Server. The I/O
modules required in I/O module bays 3 and 4 depend on the I/O Expansion Card that is
installed in the blade servers. The I/O modules required in the high speed I/O module bays 7,
8, 9, and 10 depend on the I/O Host Channel Adapter cards installed in the blade servers.
1.2 Blade servers
IBM BladeCenter servers supports a wide selection of processor technologies and operating
systems to allow clients to run all of their diverse work loads inside a single architecture. The
slim, hot-swappable blade servers fit in a single chassis like books in a bookshelf, and each is
an independent server, with its own processors, memory, storage, network controllers,
operating system and applications. The blade server simply slides into a bay in the chassis
and plugs into a midplane or backplane, sharing power, fans, diskette drives, switches, and
ports with other blade servers.
I/O module bay 4
I/O module bay 3
I/O module bay 2
I/O module bay 6
I/O module bay 1
I/O module bay 7
I/O module bay 9
I/O module bay 8
I/O module bay 10
I/O module bay 5
Power connector 2
Power connector 1
Management
module 1
Management
module bay 2
Blower module 1
Blower module 1
error LED
Blower module 2
error LED
Blower module 2
Rear system
LED panel
Serial connector