By Timothy Resker, Voice Application Sales Consultant, Magma
As server manufacturers increasingly move away from supporting full-size PCI-X slots, developers are facing restricted choices for server deployment if their solution is based on full-size PCI-X boards, such as Open Access products. Fortunately, the availability of expansion enclosures makes the choice of application servers almost limitless. By deploying Open Access PCI boards in expansion enclosures, virtually any available server can be used as an application computing platform.
Expansion enclosures consist of three main components (see Figure 1). The first component is the enclosure itself, which comprises a chassis containing an expansion motherboard, a power supply, and cooling. The expansion motherboard provides PCI-X or PCI Express slots and the necessary logic for the host interconnect. The chassis, power supply, and cooling fans are sized and designed depending upon the number of slots provided and type of boards to be used. Slots provided can range from a single slot up to 13 slots in a single enclosure.
The second component is the interconnect cable that connects the expansion enclosure to the server. The cable length can be as long 2 meters and is specifically designed to fully utilize the chosen interconnect technology.
The third component is the host bus adapter card which can be provided as a low-profile PCI/PCI-X card, a low-profile PCI Express card, or a PCMCIA type card for laptops.
Figure 1: Magma PE6R4, a 6 slot PCI-X expansion enclosure with a PCI Express host bus adapter
Expansion enclosures provide many choices for application server deployment. OEMs, service providers, and enterprise users often prefer to utilize servers from large commercial computer manufacturers, such as Dell, because of factors such as access to the latest technology, cost effectiveness, worldwide support, and OEM services. While many of these servers don’t provide the full-length PCI-X slots required for NMS boards, expansion enclosures provide an effective means to address this issue. According to Jeff Chien, Systems Consultant for Dell’s Industry Solutions Group, "Many NMS customers have come to Dell wishing to deploy their applications on our servers. We’ve partnered with Magma to provide the right number and type of slots required for these applications."
Magma is a pioneer and industry leader in the design and manufacture of expansion enclosure solutions, and Magma expansion enclosures have been successfully tested for use with Open Access boards (see Figure 1). Please visit the Magma web site at www.magma.com or contact Magma’s Voice Application Sales Consultant Tim Resker at +1-781-752-8250 or tresker@comcast.net for more information on Magma products. Please contact Andrew Dodenhoff at Andrew_Dodenhoff@Dell.com for information on Dell’s OEM services.