Computer server: rack mount, blade

Friday, 19 January 2007

With the popularity of the Internet, the computer has become a friendly companion to people of all ages who spend hours on the computer working, learning, or browsing. Personal computers are becoming increasingly integrated into the commercial economy and also utilized by private consumers for their own purposes and also to interface with the commercial economy. In today's world, computer technology is involved in many aspects of a person's day. Many devices being used today by consumers have a small computer inside of the device. These small computers come in varying sizes and degrees of sophistication. These small computers include everything from one microcontroller to a fully-functional complete computer system. Personal computer systems can usually be defined as a desk top, floor standing, or portable microcomputer that consists of a system unit having at least one system processor and associated volatile and non-volatile memory, a display monitor, a keyboard, one or more diskette drives, a fixed disk storage, and an optional printer. Many different areas of business, industry, government, education, entertainment, and most recently, the home, are tapping into the enormous and rapidly growing list of applications developed for today's increasingly powerful computer devices. The widespread deployment of computer systems has led to the equally widespread deployment of interconnected networks of digital computer systems. The infrastructure of network connected digital computer systems has led to the ubiquitous adoption of network based applications, Web applications, Web based services, and the like. Computers or computer systems can be connected in a network normally consisting of a client workstation, a server and a central network, for enabling data to be transferred from one computer to another computer. Computer servers are widely used in enterprises and organizations for the advantages of high data storage capacity and system stability. Many types of network-based applications rely upon network-connected servers for their functionality. When multiple computers share large amounts of data, a server is often connected to the data network to provide data to the computers. Servers enable many computers to access information that is stored within the network.

Computer servers provide a multitude of functions and services to other servers and other computer clients. A computer system may operate to act as a single server or may enable a number of servers to operate, independently. A computer server, forming part of a network of computer servers and computer clients, receive requests for data, provide a wide variety of data processing services and transmit data to clients and other servers. Network servers are often use for storage of information, communication, and/or to provide access to communication networks, including the Internet. Users of network servers are provided the ability to view, access, retrieve, and/or store audio, video, data graphics, and/or text files. Such files may be displayed to the user via protocols, including the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). There're many types of servers for different applications. Print servers provide printing services to other servers and/or clients. Web servers provide web page services to connected computers. File servers provide file access and file storage services. A web server is typically a computer which is capable of receiving requests for information and returning data or performing specialized processing upon the receipt of a network request for such processing. Application servers may provide business logic or application delivery services. Generic application servers can be used to provide many different types of services to the client computers that access them. For example, a generic application server can be used to authenticate users, view server files, provide access to data within one or more databases, manage e-mail, and provide access to Web sites, among other things. Database servers provide for the storage of databases and/or database management services. Typically, large databases reside on large mainframes that are also referred to as database servers. These database servers are interconnected in a communication network that serves as a data highway. Through this communication network, data information from the mainframes flows to a user who may be operating on a local workstation. A storage server allows users to efficiently retrieve information from large volumes of data stored on a plurality of disks. For example, a video-on-demand server is a storage server that accepts user requests to view a particular movie from a video library, retrieves the requested program from disk, and delivers the program to the appropriate users. A communication server provides access to communication facilities. For example, a communication server having a bank of modems may provide subscriber access to the modems for data communication.

In general, a computer server is equipment that makes available file, database, printing, facsimile, communications or other services to client terminals/stations with access to the network which the server serves. Servers may be distributed throughout a network or they may be concentrated in centralized data centers. Each server computer can communicate with any other server computer either directly or indirectly through other server computers. An industrial computer server generally comprises a server case, a set of disk drivers, a motherboard, a power adapter, and other requisite component parts. Network servers may include one or more server processing cards coupled with a server chassis. Each server processing card may include software and/or hardware components necessary to perform the functionality of a server. Each server is supported on a tray or chassis. The hardware chassis includes additional components to facilitate, support, and/or enhance the operation of the server processing cards. The chassis is typically mounted on a pair of slides to allow the chassis to slide in and out of the rack structure for convenient access to the server. Each slide is comprised of a stationary portion which is mounted to the frame of the rack structure, and a telescoping portion which is mounted to a side of the chassis. The telescoping portion is slidable with respect to the stationary portion to allow the chassis to slide in and out of the rack structure. A computer server has multiple hard disk drives connected in series. In order to provide high performance, storage servers may employ a plurality of processors connected to the disks, allowing the server to service multiple user requests simultaneously. Servers are available in different sizes, shapes and varieties. Thin server refers to a network-based computer specialized for some particular function such as, for example, a print server, DSL router, or network attached storage (NAS). Thin servers are particularly designed for ease of installation. Thin servers generally have very little expandability and are deployed without a keyboard or monitor. Bladed servers are comprehensive computing systems that include processors, memory, network connections and associated electronics, all on a single motherboard called a blade. This high-density technology addresses the current trend among large computing centers to reduce space requirements while lowering their total cost of ownership. Depending on network needs, special purpose servers also can be used to provide each of these types of services, rather than employing a generic application server. Regular computer servers are standardized in size for the convenience of maintenance and management. In order to enhance market competitiveness, the limited internal space of a standard-sized computer server must be fully utilized to provide more data storage capacity.

For convenience and to conserve floor space, computer servers for high-capacity computer systems are often mounted in rack structures. Rackmount servers provide an effective way of aggregating a large number of servers, and thus storage capacity, in a relatively small space. Typically, several computer servers are mounted in each rack structure. Rack mounted servers are typically mounted in vertical racks that comply with Electronic Industry Association (EIA) specifications. EIA standard rack mount equipment is housed in a chassis or housing 19" wide. Industry standard 19" EIA server racks are designed typically to house a column of electronics packages that are 17 3/4" in width and with varying depths. The height of an electronics package can vary but, to be compatable with the rack mounting structure, must be an integer multiple of an EIA unit called simply the "U." An EIA U is 1.75 inches. Electronic equipment generally has a height in multiples of "U's" e.g., 1U (1.75"), 2U (3.50"), 3U (5.25"), etc. Standard equipment racks are available in a wide assortment of heights, but the most common is of 42U height. EIA compliant server and other electronic equipment can be readily mounted into the EIA standard rack. The rack structure generally includes a rectangular frame covered by removable panels and a pivotable front access door. A server computer system has a processor which generates heat when being operated. The processor of each server unit subassembly usually generates a large amount of heat and removal of the heat may be problematic, especially if a large number of server unit subassemblies are located on the support frame in a compact arrangement. Modern high density servers designed to run mission critical applications require sufficient ventilation and cooling to ensure that the server maintains a high level of availability. High density rack mounted servers should also be secure from unintended and unauthorized access. An EIA standard rack server may typically have a finely perforated, lockable metal door that provides both a sufficient amount of ventilation and security. Computer server racks are typically constructed with perforated, hinged front-doors, rigid sides and a removable rear panel. The rack frame is capable of supporting the weight of the servers contained within the rack and serves as the primary means of securing components therein. The rack frame, closely resembles an industrial shelving unit and typically includes four rigid corner posts, connected to each other with a plurality of cross members and structural supports.

A blade server system is a mainstream computer server. The blade servers are high speed and stable computer server equipment for users having many servers such as a telecommunication company, internet services provider (ISP), and users needing great quantities of high speed calculations such as meteorological phenomena calculations, astronomical observations and calculations, deoxyribonucleic acid calculations in bioscience, and computer animation for the movie industry. A blade architecture is a variation on the computer server architecture. The blade architecture allows a number of servers, on the blade cards, to be housed with a single chassis. The blade server combines the hardware of the computer server, such as a processor, a memory and a network connection, in one extension card, also known as one server blade. Typically in a blade architecture, a blade card may be a single board which contains the core components of a server. These core components may include devices, such as, for example, a chipset, a processor and a basic input output system (BIOS) image. The blade server system needs peripheral devices, such as a keyboard, a video monitor and a mouse, to control the blade servers therein. An internal or an external KVM switch is used for a blade server system to reduce the quantity of the peripheral devices. The blade server has a higher calculation capacity and higher stability, and occupies less space than a traditional computer server. The blade server reduces the cost and the working temperature; moreover many functions and performance thereof are better than those of traditional computer servers. The server blades are usually hot pluggable, they can be removed from the main chassis without the need to shut down the chassis and all its components. Network access for all server blades in a chassis reduces cabling complexity and allows for relocation of server resources. Server blades may also be pre-packed with software, thus reducing the cost of deploying applications. The blades of the blade server, called server blades, are inserted in a connecting base in a blade server system. Server blades are rapidly becoming popular in data center technology. A server blade, along with storage, networking and other blades, are typically installed in a rack-mountable enclosure that houses multiple blades that share common resources such a cabling, power supplies and cooling fans.

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