HP Superdome System Hardware Components

Cells

Each cell provides processors and memory, and optionally is connected to an I/O chassis residing in the same cabinet.

Up to 4 processors and 32 DIMMs can be installed in each cell.

Figure 1-2 HP Superdome Cell Overview

I/O Chassis

HP Superdome servers can contain up to four 12-slot I/O chassis per Superdome cabinet.

For the first release, each I/O chassis provides 12 PCI card slots and resides within the same system cabinet as the cells. Each I/O chassis is connected by cables to one of the cells in the same cabinet as the I/O chassis.

The HP Superdome cabinet contains two I/O bays, each of which supports up to two 12-slot I/O chassis. I/O bay 0 is in the front of the cabinet, and I/O bay 1 is in the cabinet's rear.

Within each I/O bay, the left I/O chassis is chassis 1, and the right I/O chassis is chassis 3. (Chassis numbers 0 and 4 are reserved for future support of 6-slot PCI chassis.)

PCI cards reside in the same cabinet as the cells and I/O chassis. However, all I/O devices (hard disks, DVD-ROM devices) must reside in an external cabinet.

Note that PCI slot numbers do not always correspond to the associated HP-UX hardware path. See “HP Superdome PCI I/O Slots and Hardware Paths”.

In each I/O chassis, PCI slots 4 to 7 provide 4xPCI (66 MHz, 400 Mbytes/sec.), and all others (slots 0 to 3 and 8 to 11) provide 2xPCI (33 MHz, 200 Mbytes/sec.).

In Superdome 12-slot I/O chassis, slots 0-6 share one of the chassis's I/O runway busses and slots 7-11 share the other I/O runway bus in the chassis.

Following the first release, other Superdome I/O options will be available. External I/O expansion cabinets will provide room for additional I/O chassis. Also, when released, 6-slot I/O chassis also will be supported, with up to eight 6-slot I/O chassis within each Superdome cabinet.

Cables

The two primary types of cables are: cell-to-I/O cables ("RIO cables") and backplane-connection cables ("Flex cables").

In order to make I/O accessible to the partitions you configure, you or your HP service representative must physically connect each I/O chassis to a cell within the cabinet using RIO cables.

Figure 1-3 HP Superdome Cell and I/O Connection

The backplane-connection cables (Flex cables) establish how backplane crossbar components communicate within a Superdome server complex.

Power and Service ("Attention") Lights

Each cell and each I/O chassis has two sets of lights (LEDs): power/status LEDs (green) and service LEDs (amber/yellow).

Each cabinet has a red service ("Attention") LED.

Chapter 4 includes details on using the fruled command or Partition Manager to manipulate (turn on or off) the cell, I/O chassis, and cabinet LEDs.

See the fruled(1) and parmgr(1M) manpages for details.

Power and Cooling (Fans)

Both power and cooling can be redundant.

You can check the status of fans and power supplies using various methods described in this chapter and in Chapter 3 “Managing the Overall Complex”. For example, the parstatus -V -b0 HP-UX command displays detailed information about cabinet 0's power and cooling configuration.

Consult with your HP service or sales representative to determine the amount and placement of power and cooling components.

The following power components can be installed in each Superdome cabinet: one or two main power sources (PDCA 0 and PDCA 1), three backplane power components (HBPB 0-2), and up to six bulk power supplies (BPS 0-5). Note that five BPS components is the minimum requirement per cabinet, and six can be installed for redundancy.

The following fans are installed in each Superdome cabinet: four blowers (0-3, at the cabinet's top) and five I/O fans (0-4, inside the cabinet above the I/O chassis).

See Figure 1-4 “HP Superdome Cabinet Overview” for an overview of these items and their locations.

Utilities Components

Each HP Superdome server complex has two categories of utilities boards: the boards that comprise the Guardian Service Processor (GSP), and the clock, power monitoring, and cabinet-level utilities board (UGUY).

Each Superdome cabinet has a UGUY board.

The GSP includes two types of boards: the SBCH, which provides the interface to the Customer LAN (GSP network interface 0), and the SBC, which provides the HP Private LAN (GSP network interface 1) as well as the remote RS-232 port for modem access and the local RS-232 port for direct access.

Each Superdome cabinet has an SBCH board, and in Superdome 64-way server complexes only cabinet 0 has an SBC board.

See Chapter 2 for details on using the Superdome console and utilities interfaces.

Service Management Station

The Service Management Station is an HP A-Class workstation that is connected to the Superdome server for service and upgrade purposes.

The Service Management Station is primarily used by HP service personnel for firmware upgrades, system scan purposes, and hardware verification purposes.