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1-2 Sun Fire B1600 Blade System Chassis Switch Administration Guide • June 2003
1.1 Overview
The switches provide Gigabit Ethernet connectivity for the Sun Fire B1600 blade
system chassis.
If a fault develops in one switch, operation continues without
interruption
on the second. All components in the chassis—blades, SSCs and power
supply units (PSUs)—plug into a common midplane which provides all
interconnection between the components.
Each of the 16 server blades is connected to a single port on each switch by a Gigabit
Ethernet link that provides the blade’s principal means of I/O. The switch within
each SSC provides the Gigabit Ethernet fabric that connects all the blades together,
in addition to eight external links for connection to the network. Each blade is also
connected to the System Controller (SC) within each SSC by a simple serial link. The
SC enables you to manage and monitor the components of the chassis. It also gives
you access to the switch's command-line interface, and to the console for each server
blade installed in the chassis.
1.1.1 Switch Architecture
The switch employs a high-speed switching fabric that enables simultaneous
transport of multiple packets at low latency on all ports. The switch also uses store-
and-forward technology to ensure maximum data integrity. In this mode, the entire
packet must be received into a port buffer and checked for validity before being
forwarded, preventing errors from propagating throughout the network.
1.1.2 Ways of Accessing the Switch Management
Application
There is a serial console port implemented with an RJ-45 jack that provides on-site
management access to the SC. When you apply power to the system chassis, the
interface for the SC is displayed. To access the command-line interface for the
switch, see “Configuration Options” on page 2-2 or refer to the Sun Fire B1600 Blade
System Chassis Software Setup Guide.
This command-line interface can also be accessed directly using telnet through the
100BASE-TX RJ-45 management port (NETMGT) on the SSC.
The switch can also be managed by connecting to this port over the network with a
Web browser or SNMP/RMON software.