Jarrod Spiga21 February 2009, 4:05 PM
Jarrod Spiga takes you on a visual tour of the insides of a server.
A tour of a HP DL360 G5 server that (at the time of writing) I was
preparing for deployment in the Sydney Data Centre facility that my
employer uses. This server is a 1RU server that is designed for general
purpose, medium-to-high density installations. This particular server
is the performance variant (basic and standard variants are also
available) and supports up to two quad-core Intel Xeon microprocessors,
32GB of RAM and six 2.5-inch SAS hard disk drives. It is simple to
perform maintenance on the server and for the most part, tools are not
required. Detailed specification and maintenance documents for the
server can be freely downloaded from HP’s website.
A
close-up view of the front of the server, showing a single-port, 10,000
RPM, 146GB SAS hard disk drive. The two LEDs on the right indicate the
status of the disk (disk activity, failure status, etc). The maroon
latch is used to remove this hot-swappable disk from the server.
After pressing the maroon latch in, a handle swings out from the drive caddy, allowing for easy removal of the drive. Replacing the drive is a
simple matter of pushing the caddy in to the server and swinging the
handle back in so that the maroon latch locks the handle in place.
The
underside of the drive caddy showing the drive’s electronics including
the SAS and power connectors. The server provides SAS and power
connections to the drive via the disk backplane.
The
server ships rails that allow the server to be mounted in a
communications rack. These rails also allow the server to be slid out
so that maintenance can be done on the server hardware. The rails are
designed so that they can be installed securely without the use of
tools, screws or cage nuts.
A
latch on top of the server is used to fix the top lid in place. By
lifting the latch, the top lid slides back, allowing for its removal.
Next:
Opening up the serverThe Full Tour A typical rack serverOpening it upHeatsink, CPU and fansMemory, slots and graphics cardPower supplyThe USB and LED panelsStorage optionsCablesManaging the server