Other physical features of the IBM x440

The 4U-high chassis has two 1-inch hot-swap drive slots and two Ultrabay 2000 slots for the floppy and CD drives. Ultrabay 2000 slots are half-inch-high peripheral ports originally developed for IBM's ThinkPad notebook platform. Two hot-swap, load-balancing power supply modules are loaded in the front panel to ease replacement. Normally, power supply modules are loaded in the rear of a server's chassis.

A Light Path Diagnostics panel is recessed in the front panel. Pushing on the Light Path Diagnostics panel will let the panel be extended outside the chassis to view all the diagnostic LEDs. These LEDs lead the administrator to the source of hardware problems in the event of a failure in the system fans, power supplies, memory and/or CPUs.

The rear of the chassis has connections for both power connections. Each power connection is directly connected to one of the two power supply modules loaded in the front panel of the chassis. Each of the six PCI card slot external connections are on the rear panel. A built-in BroadCom 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet interface connector is on the rear panel.

Special connections also are available for system expansion on the rear panel. Each SMP Expansion Module has three connectors. Two connectors are used for connecting the two SMP Expansion Modules inside the chassis if more than four processors are needed. This connection can be made with one cable, but a second connection is available for fault tolerance. The other connector on each SMP Expansion Module connects to another SMP Expansion Module in a second x440 chassis if more than eight processors are needed. Two other connectors near the PCI slots are available for connecting to an optional external PCI-X expansion chassis. This chassis has 12 PCI slots arranged in two six-slot bays identical to the six-slot PCI-X bays internal to the x440.

The top of the chassis allows access to the two large system fans. These fans can be removed and replaced without tools and without opening the chassis cover. The two-door hinged chassis cover is accessible from the top of the chassis. This cover allows access to the six PCI-X slots, the two PCI slots and hard drive fans, and the SMP Expansion Modules. All components are accessible without tools and are clearly marked to denote if they are hot-swappable or not.

The two SMP Expansion Modules are stacked on the right side of the chassis. They are easy to remove and replace with easy-to-use extraction arms. The SMP Expansion Module is easy to open once it is removed from the x440 chassis to reveal the CPUs and memory. The large CPU heat sinks require tools to remove and are a little tricky to replace. The CPUs are seated in a dense pin socket. A CPU can be removed by releasing a lever. Removing and replacing processors isn't a quick operation and is a little cumbersome if you have large hands.

Back to the main review: IBM eServer xSeries x440

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