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Introduction

The BladeCenter® S Type 8886 is a high-density, high-performance rack-mounted server system. It supports up to six blade servers that can share common resources, such as power, cooling, management, and I/O resources within a single BladeCenter S chassis. In addition, it provides support for up to twelve 3.5-inch, hot-swappable SAS or SATA hard disk drives or twenty-four 2.5-inch, hot-swappable SAS hard disk drives.

The BladeCenter S system provides the following features:
  • IBM® Enterprise X-Architecture® Technology

    IBM Enterprise X-Architecture Technology leverages proven innovative IBM technologies to build powerful, scalable, and reliable blade servers. It provides features such as IBM Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA) and real-time diagnostics.

  • Server expansion capabilities
    You can add up to six blade servers to the BladeCenter S chassis. Some blade servers have connectors for additional optional devices that you can use to add capabilities to the blade server. For example, you can connect either a storage expansion unit or a PCI expansion unit to a blade server. Alternatively, you can add optional I/O expansion cards to add network interfaces or storage through I/O modules. SAS expansion cards provide access through SAS connectivity modules or SAS RAID controller modules that are installed in I/O bays 3 and 4 to the hard disk drives in the BladeCenter S chassis.
    Note
    SAS connectivity modules support the use of SAS or SATA hard disk drives. SAS RAID controller modules support the use of SAS hard disk drives only.
  • Hot-swap capabilities

    Bays in the BladeCenter S chassis are hot-swappable. For example, you can add, remove, or replace a blade server or a SAS or SATA hard disk drive without removing power from the BladeCenter S chassis.

    The midplane provides hot-pluggable connectors for the following components:
    • Six blade servers
    • Four I/O modules
    • One advanced management module
    • One serial pass-thru module
    • Four power modules
    • Four fan modules
    • Two disk storage modules
    • One media tray
  • High-availability design
    Components in the BladeCenter S system enable continued operation if one of the components fails:
    • Power modules. In normal operation, the power modules provide power to share the system load. If a power module fails, the working power modules can continue to handle the entire load. You can replace a power module without shutting down the BladeCenter S system.
      Note
      The power management policy that you have implemented for the BladeCenter S system determines the result of a power module failure.

      Power modules also provide cooling fans for the disk storage modules. Therefore, if you are using disk storage module 1, you must install power modules 1 and 2. If you are using disk storage module 2, you must install power modules 3 and 4.

    • Fan modules. In normal operation, fan modules share the cooling in the BladeCenter S system. If one fan module fails, the other three fan modules handle the entire load. You can replace a fan module without shutting down the BladeCenter S system.
    • BladeCenter S system midplane. The midplane has the following characteristics:
      • Redundant high-speed serialize/deserialize (SERDES) interconnects between blade servers and switches
      • I2C communication between the advanced management module and all modules (except blade servers)
      • RS-485 (EIA 485) communication between the advanced management module and blade servers
      • Analog video connectors from the blade servers to the advanced management module
      • USB connections between the blade servers and the advanced management module
  • Systems management

    The advanced management module is used to communicate with the service processor in each blade server to provide system monitoring, event recording, and alerts. You can manage the BladeCenter S chassis, its devices, and the blade servers remotely.