Signal Midplane Provides Reliability - Compaq BL10e - HP ProLiant - 512 MB RAM Configuration

Figure 11. Different topologies require different emphasis settings
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Signal midplane provides reliability

Finally, to provide high reliability, the NonStop signal midplane is designed as a completely passive
board, meaning that it has no active components along the high-speed signal paths. The PCB consists
primarily of traces and connectors. While there are a few components on the PCB, they are limited to
passive devices that are extremely unlikely to fail. The only active device is an Electrically Erasable
Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM), which the Onboard Administrator uses to acquire
information such as the midplane serial number. If this device were to fail, it would not affect the
signaling functionality of the NonStop signal midplane. The NonStop signal midplane incorporates
best design practices and is based on the same type of midplane used for decades in high-availability
solutions such as the HP NonStop S-series, core networking switches from Cisco, Juniper Networks
and core SAN switches from Cisco and Brocade. HP engineers have estimated that the mean time
between failure (MTBF) for the signal midplane is in the hundreds of years.
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