Mainframe Computer Connector Wear Correlation and Prediction Analysis

Mainframe computers are expected to be highly reliable and available. To achieve this high level of reliability and availability, care must be taken from the initial development cycles to insure robust software and hardware. Here, the discussion will be focused on the structural aspect, namely the hardware assembly. A mainframe computer’s hardware structure consists of the rack, processor drawer, cooling assembly, input and output (I/O) assembly, power supply assembly, memory assembly and storage drawers. A typical mainframe computer with a single drawer installed is shown in Figure 1. The total height is 2.0 m where a total of 42 units (U) of many different types of mountable assemblies or drawers can be installed in the rack; 1U is 44.45 mm in vertical height. The height of the assemblies varies from 88 mm to 440 mm. The rack is an EIA (Electronic Industries Alliance) standard 19-inch-wide rack (482.6 mm), where the actual width of the mounting rails where the assemblies or server drawer is installed is 17 ¾” (450.85 mm). The total width of the rack is equal to 600 mm, which provides space to accommodate the cabling and vertical structure outside the width of the server drawer. The rack depth is 1070 mm. The drawer shown in Figure 1 is a 4U server drawer installed in the bottom of the rack, with a total drawer mass of 73 kg.