Firmware Considerations; Bios; Operating System Considerations; Windows 2000 Installation Considerations - IBM 8677 - BladeCenter Rack-mountable - Power Supply Planning And Installation Manual

v Memory-module options to increase the amount of memory in your blade server.
v A Fibre Channel I/O expansion option, which will provide the blade server with
v SCSI storage expansion unit to use SCSI hard disk drives with your blade server.

Firmware considerations

You can download the latest firmware for a blade server at
http://www.ibm.com/pc/support/. After downloading the latest firmware, use the
BladeCenter management module Web interface to flash the system-management
module. The Web interface is described in the IBM BladeCenter Installation and
User's Guide on the IBM BladeCenter Documentation CD.

BIOS

When the BIOS code page jumper (J12) is moved from pins 1 and 2 (the default
position) to pins 2 and 3 on the blade server system board, you can boot the blade
server from a backup BIOS page. See the blade server Hardware Maintenance
Manual and Troubleshooting Guide on the IBM BladeCenter Documentation CD for
complete details.
Note: If you boot from the backup page because the primary BIOS page has

Operating system considerations

The following operating systems are supported on a blade server:
v Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
v Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
v Red Hat Linux 7.3
v SuSE Professional 8.0

Windows 2000 installation considerations

Information about installing Windows 2000 and Windows XP on a blade server is on
the IBM Support Web page at http://www.ibm.com/pc/support/. From the IBM
Support Web page select Servers; then, select OS installation and choose the
operating system to install from the Operating system installation by category
drop-down list.
In addition, you can find redpieces and redpapers about installing Windows 2000 on
the BladeCenter unit at http://www.ibm.com/redbooks (search for BladeCenter).
Note the following considerations when installing Windows 2000 Server or Windows
2000 Advanced Server on a blade server:
When you install memory, you must install a pair of matched dual inline memory
modules (DIMMs).
two additional network connections for communicating on a network. If you add a
Fibre Channel I/O expansion option, you must make sure the switch module in
switch module bays 3 and 4 on the BladeCenter unit use the Fibre Channel
interface. In addition, the I/O expansion option occupies the same location on the
blade server as the second 2.5-inch IDE hard drive drive. Therefore, you can
install only one 2.5-inch IDE hard disk drive.
With the SCSI storage expansion unit, you can install up to two 1-inch (26 mm)
slim-high, 3.5-inch, hot-swap SCSI hard disk drives. If you install the SCSI
storage expansion unit, the blade server will occupy two blade bays in the
BladeCenter unit.
become damaged, you need to re-flash the primary BIOS code.
Chapter 3. Deployment considerations
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