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3.1 Types of Maintenance Supported in the SPARC M10-4/M10-4S


3.1 Types of Maintenance Supported in the SPARC M10-4/M10-4S
The types of maintenance supported in the SPARC M10-4 and SPARC M10-4S depend on the system operation status during maintenance. The supported maintenance is divided into three types: active maintenance, inactive maintenance, and system-stopped maintenance.
  1. Active Maintenance
    Maintenance is performed while the physical partition of a FRU requiring maintenance is operating.
  2. Inactive maintenance
    Maintenance is performed while the physical partition of a FRU requiring maintenance is stopped.
    Inactive maintenance applies to a system with two or more partitions in a multiple-BB configuration only.
    Therefore, regarding the SPARC M10-4 and also the SPARC M10-4S with the 1BB configuration, the type of maintenance performed with the physical partition stopped is system-stopped maintenance, not inactive maintenance.
  1. System-stopped maintenance
    Maintenance is performed with all physical partitions stopped.
Each of the three maintenance types is further divided into two types: hot maintenance and cold maintenance.
  1. Hot maintenance
    Maintenance is performed with the power cord of the FRU requiring maintenance connected.
  2. Cold maintenance
    Maintenance is performed with the power cord of the FRU requiring maintenance removed.
The FRUs for which hot maintenance or cold maintenance is enabled differ between a configuration using one SPARC M10-4 or SPARC M10-4S unit and a building block configuration using two or more SPARC M10-4S units.
For example, active/cold maintenance can be performed on a CPU memory unit only if it is in a building block configuration. In this state, the physical partition to which the target CPU memory unit belongs is operating (active). This means that maintenance is performed after this CPU memory unit (PSB) is dynamically released from the physical partition and the power cord of the CPU memory unit is removed.
Furthermore, system-stopped/cold maintenance for a building block configuration is divided into the following two types:
  1. Maintenance performed with the maintenance menu when only the SPARC M10-4S requiring maintenance is in the cold state
  2. Maintenance performed without using the maintenance menu when every SPARC M10-4S is in the cold state
The latter is called "system-stopped/all power-off cold maintenance" to distinguish it from the maintenance performed with the maintenance menu.
Table 3-2 lists the characteristics of each type of maintenance viewed from three aspects: system availability, the time required for maintenance, and the difficulty level of maintenance work.
Table 3-2  Characteristics of each type of maintenance
Type of maintenance System availability Time required for maintenance Difficulty level of maintenance work
Active/Hot maintenance Higher Shorter Higher
Active/Cold maintenance | | |
Inactive/Hot maintenance | | |
Inactive/Cold maintenance | | |
System-stopped/hot maintenance | | |
System-stopped/cold maintenance Lower Longer Lower