Playtime in a Unisys test lab
When I interviewed several Windows 2000 Datacenter Server administrators for "Datacenter in Action" (http://www.win2000mag.com, InstantDoc ID 20777), they each made running their systems sound easy. Too easy, I suspected—until I tried a Datacenter system. A big advantage of a Datacenter system is that the system arrives with the OS installed and tailored to your needs. The OEM sets up the tools, customizes the snap-ins, and writes additional custom utilities—an administrator's dream. And as complicated and powerful as Data-center might be, performing typical administrative tasks is straightforward and easy.
Hardware
One rule that Microsoft sets for Datacenter OEMs is that the OEMs' technical personnel extensively test each computer before delivery. I visited Unisys's Datacenter server test lab and, of course, chose to play with the biggest and brawniest server there: the Unisys e-@ction Enterprise Server ES7000. This refrigerator-sized system uses Unisys's Cellular MultiProcessing (CMP) architecture and is a marvelous specimen of computer engineering. Unisys licenses the CMP design to other Datacenter OEMs.
What you call a backplane in a PC is a midplane in this behemoth (the device sits in the middle of the box). Components such as processors and buses attach to both the front and the back of the plane. Memory also resides on it. You can access the midplane through the box's front and back doors. Each side of the midplane can have a separate power supply.
The ES7000 that I worked with contained 32 Intel Xeon processors; the machine is ready to receive Intel's 64-bit Itanium processors when they become available. You can mix and match processor types within the machine but not within individual partitions. The ES7000 arranges processors in eight groups, called sub-pods, of four processors. Each sub-pod connects to a Level 3 cache module (the processors provide Level 2 cache). You can assign sub-pods to any partition, although this option restricts you to assigning processors in groups of four.
Each sub-pod has a direct I/O bridge (DIB) that has three PCI buses holding four PCI slots each. Do the math: That's 96 PCI slots. Four memory modules, which Unisys calls Memory Storage Units (MSUs), hold 16GB of memory each. These MSUs look like SIMMs on steroids. The Level 3 cache modules provide data to the system at about 6 times the speed that system memory does. Unisys engineers told me that for day-to-day operations, most applications will find necessary data waiting in the cache 95 percent of the time.
A device that Unisys calls a crossbar uses point-to-point connections between memory, processors, and I/O components. The crossbar is the core of Unisys's CMP architecture, boosting the ES7000's performance because data doesn't need to cross the bus to move between these components.
Cooling this box isn't a job for a standard fan. The ES7000's three impellers look like small jet-engine fans. "Almost everything in the box is hot-swappable," said a lab technician, as he yanked an impeller out of its fitting. Immediately, the noise level rose as the remaining units increased their speeds to compensate. When the technician replaced the device, the other impellers slowed their speeds. Although hot swapping isn't a new concept, per se, I'm a Windows administrator, so I typically don't see much of it. This demonstration of the ES7000's hot-swapping capabilities impressed me.
Managing Datacenter
Datacenter servers offer several management tools, some from Microsoft and some from the OEM. OEMs typically load Win2K Server Terminal Services in Remote Administration mode on the Datacenter server. Administrators can then use Terminal Services Client to access the Datacenter server from their Win2K Professional machines.
Datacenter's primary management tool is Microsoft's Process Control, which administrators can use to organize and manage processes and the resources processes utilize. Process Control runs as a service on Datacenter, and administrators can use either a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in or a command-line interface to manipulate Process Control's configurations and functions. (If you install Process Control directly on Win2K Pro, you can also remotely administer Datacenter processes and resources without using Terminal Services.) You can use Process Control to set limits on a process's use of virtual memory or assign processors to a process or group of processes.
Previous
Register
