I/O Daughtercards
Daughtercards for blade servers are similar to PCI cards for traditional rack and tower servers except they sit directly on top of the motherboard. A daughtercard adds additional PCI-X or PCI-Express I/O functionality and flexibility to any blade server in the PowerEdge 1855. In all cases the path between the peripherals and the I/O modules provides path diversity and redundancy. Each of the dual port daughtercards route to the corresponding I/O module. Port 1 routes to I/O module 3 and Port 2 routes I/O module 4.
Dell 2342M, powered by Qlogic
The Dell 2342M is an I/O daughtercard, based on the Qlogic 2342 HBA chipset that is offered as a traditional PCI controller, enables redundant Fibre Channel connections from the blade server to the Brocade Silkworm 3014 Fibre Channel switch, McDATA 4314 Fibre Channel switch, or Fibre Channel Pass-Through Module in the rear of the chassis. From the Fibre Channel switch or Pass-Through modules, redundant connections can be made to external SAN storage such as the Dell/EMC AX100, CX300, CX500 or CX700.
Topspin Infiniband HCA daughtercard
The Topspin InfiniBand HCA daughtercard, based on the Topspin PCI-Express HCA that is offered as a traditional PCI controller, enables redundant Infiniband connections from the blade server to the Topspin Infiniband Pass-Through Module in the rear of the chassis. From the Pass-Through module, redundant 4x (10Gbps) connections can be made to an external Topspin Infiniband switch such as the Topspin 120 or Topspin 270. This solution provides exceptional throughput with low latency ideally suited for high performance computing clusters.
Intel Gigabit Ethernet daughtercard
The Intel Gigabit Ethernet daughtercard, based on an Intel NIC that is offered as a traditional PCI controller and the same embedded NICs already in this blade server, enables redundant Gigabit Ethernet connections from the blade server to the PowerConnect 5316M or Ethernet Pass-Through Module in the rear of the chassis. From the PowerConnect 5316M switch or Ethernet Pass-Through module, redundant connections can be made to an external network.
Dell is driving additional functionality and density into blade servers by working with industry leading I/O partners to deliver a variety of internal daughtercard and I/O modules. Industry leading networking, Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand technologies are available today, with many more to come in the future.
