Paul J Freet

US Patent:

20020078290, Jun 20, 2002

Filed:

Nov 16, 2001

Appl. No.:

09/987917

Inventors:

Joel Derrico - Atlanta GA, US
Paul Freet - Duluth GA, US

International Classification:

G06F013/00

US Classification:

710/302000

Abstract:

A method of mounting a hot-swappable module in a computer network appliance, the module comprising a hot swap connector including ground pins, power pins and signal pins, the computer network appliance including a backplane board having hot swap mating connectors, the method comprising connecting the ground pins of the hot swap connector of the module with corresponding ground elements of a hot swap mating connector of the backplane board; connecting the power pins of the hot swap connector of the module with corresponding power elements of the hot swap mating connector of the backplane board after the ground pins have made contact; and connecting the signal pins of the hot swap connector of the module with corresponding signal elements of the hot swap mating connector of the backplane board after the power pins have made contact. The computer network appliance further comprises a hot-swappable CPU module, a hot-swappable power module, and a hot-swappable ethernet switch module. Each of the CPU module, power module and ethernet switch module includes a hot swap connector for connecting with a specific hot swap mating connector of the backplane board. The CPU module operates as a stand alone computer. The CPU module comprises hardware BIOS for configuring the CPU module and instructing a network attached storage (NAS) to locate an operating system (OS) from which to boot. The CPU module is configured to boot remotely from an OS located in the NAS without user intervention. The remote booting ability of the CPU module allows the CPU module to run different types of operating systems without the need for a local hard disk drive (HDD), which increases the mean time between failure (MTBF) and decreases the mean time to repair (MTTR) of the computer network appliance.