The placement of the hardware components in a cabinet follows these general cabinet build conventions:
- Each chassis has a standard position in the cabinet, and is numbered from the bottom up.
- Chassis that are managed over the server management network have assigned chassis ID numbers. The chassis ID number identifies the chassis by position/type in the management interface.
- Unmanaged chassis are numbered by position for cabling purposes only. The numbers do not appear in the management interface as identification of the chassis.
- All chassis except the top Ethernet switches are loaded from the front of the cabinet, and accessible from both front and rear of the cabinet. The top Ethernet switches are loaded and accessible only from the rear of the cabinet.
- First-tier switches are installed in every 2 of 3 cabinets.
- When there are three or more cabinets, the second-tier switches are required in the topology. If the second-tier switch is a 36-port switch, then it always resides in cabinet 2 (the first expansion cabinet).
- Very large systems may require the use of 108-port switches as second-tier switches. These switches reside in a separate switch cabinet.
- Nodes are installed starting at the bottom and working up the available chassis positions in the stackup.
- Mid-tier nodes are installed first, followed by worker nodes.
- SAS App Server nodes are installed next.