The Sun BladeTM 8000 Modular System is a 19 rack unit tall system within the Sun Blade 8000 Series Modular Systems product family.
This topic includes the following sections:
System Components
Server Modules
I/O Connectivity
CMM and SP System Management
Sun ILOM
Operating Systems
The Sun Blade 8000 Modular System is shown in the figures below. The 10 blades are accessible from the front of the chassis, along with six power supplies and three front fan modules. At the rear of the chassis are up to 20 PCI Express ExpressModules and four Sun Blade 8000 Network Express Modules, two Chassis Monitoring Modules, and nine fan modules. All of these components are hot-pluggable. All active chassis components that are critical to system operation are configured for redundancy.
The Sun Blade 8000 Modular System is designed for ease-of-service by either the customer for user-upgradeable components or by authorized service personnel.
For chassis specifications, see Sun Blade 8000 Modular System Specifications.
In the illustrations below, the chassis front view is at the left and the chassis rear view is at the right.
Illustration Key
The Sun Blade 8000 Modular System architecture includes capacity for up to 10 hot-pluggable Sun Blade Server Modules (blades) each with its own service processor. Depending on the blade, either two or four dual-core or quad-core CPUs are supported. See About CPUs and Memory Module Specifications.
The blades also support two hot-pluggable disk drives in these capacities:
2 drives per Server Module
2.5-inch 73GB, 10,000 rpm SAS drive
2.5-inch 73GB, 15,000 rpm SAS drive
2.5-inch 146GB, 10,000 rpm SAS drive
2.5-inch 80GB, 5,400 rpm SATA drive (available for X8400, X8420, X8440 Server Modules only)
2.5-inch 200GB, 5,000 rpm SATA drive
For added reliability, RAID 0 and RAID 1 is built into the disk controller.
Each blade contains its own power distribution starting from the 48V provided by the chassis. The blade provides 12V and standby power to its two associated PCI Express ExpressModules.
The front panel of the blade provides one VGA port, two USB ports, and one serial port. System indicators and buttons available on the front panel include the OK, Service Action Required, Locator, and Ready-to-Remove LEDs, along with the Locator and Power buttons. Servicing of the blade can be done without affecting cabling or I/O configuration.
For Server Module specifications, see Server Module Specifications.
All I/O is PCI Express-based on hot-pluggable customer-replaceable units (CRUs) called PCI Express ExpressModules (EMs) and Network Express Modules (NEMs). There are six PCI Express interfaces per blade.
On X8400, X8420, and X8450 Server Modules:
20 Gbytes per second of I/O per blade supported.
Up to 200 Gbytes per second of I/O per chassis supported.
On X8440 Server Module:
24 Gbytes per second of I/O per blade supported.
240 Gbytes per second of I/O per chassis supported when all X8400 Server Modules are used.
Refer to the Sun Blade 8000 Series Product Notes for the latest updates about new EMs and NEMs that are available for the system.
The PCI Express ExpressModules are based on the PCI Express industry-standard form factor for EMs. The EMs provide dedicated I/O functions on a per blade basis. There are two EMs for each blade, for up to 20 EMs per chassis. The EMs available include:
4-Gbps, Sun PCIe Dual-Port Fibre Channel EM
1-Gbps, Sun PCIe Dual-Port Gigabit Ethernet UTP EM
1-Gbps, Sun PCIe Dual-Port Gigabit Ethernet MMF EM
10-Gbps, Sun Dual-Port 4x InfiniBand HCA PCIe EM
Sun StorageTek 4Gb Fibre Channel Dua-Port HBA From Emulex
Sun Dual 10GbE XFP PCIe EM
You can customize the blade and EM configurations in the chassis. For example, one blade can be configured with redundant Fibre Channel EMs, while another blade can have a single Fibre Channel EM and a single InfiniBand EM.
The customer-replaceable EMs are hot-pluggable and can be serviced without opening the chassis or blade. The hot-plug operation is under direct control of the blade hardware and operating system. The Chassis Monitoring Module (CMM) is not involved with EM hot-plug operations. The EMs provide a maximum of 4 Gbytes per second of I/O per module.
Up to four Sun Blade 8000 Network Express Modules offer "bulk" or aggregated I/O options to the blades. The first available NEMs for the Sun Blade 8000 Modular System include:
Sun 20-Port Gigabit Ethernet NEM
Sun StorageTek 4Gb Fibre Channel NEM
Sun 10-Port 4x DDR InfiniBand PCIe NEM
The NEMs connect via the system midplane to all 10 blades in the chassis and appear to the blades as standard PCI Express adapters. Each NEM implements the equivalent functionality of 10 PCI Express adapters. Designed within a Sun proprietary form factor, these switchless networking devices are hot-pluggable independent of the blades, allowing you to add or remove NEMs without powering down the system. Because the NEMs interface to the blades via PCI Express, you do not need to add a blade-based I/O component when a new NEM is installed.
For more information about the EMs and NEMs, see the I/O Modules section under About System Components in this Online Information System.
System management is also based on industry standards. Each blade contains its own directly addressable service processor (SP) that supports IPMI, SNMP, CLI, HTTP/HTTPS, and SSH v2.0 interfaces. The SP implements an IPMI baseboard management controller (BMC), which enables IPMI management functions to the blade's BIOS and OS applications, and to IPMI-based management tools accessing the BMC either through the OS interfaces or via the SP's Ethernet management interface. The SP also manages inventory and environmental controls for the blade itself, along with CPUs, DIMMs, and PCI Express ExpressModules, and provides user access to this data.
Chassis management is based on redundant, hot-pluggable Chassis Monitoring Modules (CMMs) that work with the SP on each blade to form a complete chassis management system. The CMM controls the embedded Ethernet network and also provides the basic chassis management functions, such as coordination of power supply, blade, and CMM hot-plug operations. The CMM appears to each blade's SP as a satellite BMC, providing the status of the common chassis elements. Chassis power management enables the CMM to monitor the total power available from the power supplies, and to ensure that power required by the active blades remains within that power availability. The CMM provides direct environmental and replaceable unit inventory management via HTTP, CLI, and SNMP interfaces.
The same CMM is supported on both the 8000 Chassis and 8000 P Chassis. The CMM provides a serial DB-9 interface for SER MGT and an RJ-45 Ethernet connector for NET MGT. (The AUX MGT port is not enabled on the system.) The CMM is also compatible with Sun N1TM System Manager software and some third-party management software.
Sun Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) firmware is preinstalled on the CMM and SP, and it initializes as soon as power is applied to the chassis. ILOM provides a graphical user interface (GUI) as well as a command-line interface (CLI) that you can use to administer and diagnose local or remote systems. ILOM provides per-blade and chassis-wide management functions. ILOM enables you to remotely manage the blades and provides remote floppy and CD-ROM emulation.
Running on the CMMs, ILOM provides chassis power control; control and fault monitoring for fans and power supply units; hot-plug coordination for all replaceable units except disks and EMs; and centralized fault diagnosis for the entire chassis. ILOM running on the blade SP provides keyboard, video, mouse, storage (KVMS) redirection over the management network; blade power and reset control; and blade fault monitoring.
Out-of-band communication is provided via the serial port for CLI console access and via a dedicated Ethernet for web GUI, CLI via SSH, IPMI 2.0, and SNMP v1, v2C, and v3. In-band communication is provided via the host operating system. ILOM runs on the CMM and SP independently of the rest of the system, using the system's standby power. Therefore, ILOM continues to function and be accessible when the system's operating system goes offline or when the system is powered off.
For more information about ILOM, see the topics in the System Management Operations section of this Online Information System.
For information about the operating systems supported on the Sun Blade server modules, see Supported Operating Systems.