Server+ – 7/20/2009

Tonight’s class was all about power and rack installation.  Without either, managing the server hardware would be a pain in the butt.  Kinda like running into this guy in a dark alley:

Anyway, we first discussed the different types of power supplies.  Specifically, we talked about these five:

• Standby/Offline – Power goes first to a transformer, and then to the UPS battery.  Not for server use (home, maybe)
• Line Interactive – Like standby, but uses voltage regulators to keep spikes from hitting the hardware.  Used in smaller servers.
• Online/Double Conversion – Cleans the power source, and is used for mission critical servers.
• Software – connects to serial or USB port and can do a bunch of predetermined activities if the battery is kicked on (like backup, etc.)
• Failover – batteries in UPS can fail, so have multiple ones in order that you can swap out the bad ones.

Afterwards we went over the server rack. Therer are different types of racks — open racks and closed racks, each offering their own benefits in terms of cost-effectiveness and security (respectively) but they all conform (or should anyway) to a set of standards that allows us to install components from different manufacturers in them.  Server racks base their sizes on the “U” system, where a U=1.75″.  We have various sizes of server racks out there, ranging from 22U up to a 42U.

As a reminder, we will be having a midterm exam on August 3 (two weeks from now), which will include chapters 1-5 (we’ll talk about chapter five next week, July 27.  We’ve been doing a good job of staying on course, so your syllabus is still spot-on.

Homework:

• Chapter Four Review Questions