Patent ID: 7549018

Claim:
A blade enclosure, comprising: at least one server blade; first and second redundant switches, each switch, including: a first plurality of host adapter (HA) ports to which the at least one server blade is connectable; and a second plurality of ports to which a plurality of drive enclosure blades (DEB) are connectable; an integrated drive enclosure blade (I-DEB), comprising: first and second redundant RAID controllers, both RAID controllers including first and second configurable ports connectable to corresponding ports of the second plurality of ports of the first and second switches, respectively, and both RAID controllers further including a pair of device adapter (DA) ports; and a multi-drive tray (MDT) coupled to both RAID controllers through a pair of redundant DA ports; an enclosure management module programmed to selectively configure, in response to an input, the blade enclosure in a first configuration and a second configuration; the first configuration comprising: the first and second ports of both of the first and second RAID controllers configured as HA ports through which the first and second RAID controllers are accessible to the server blades; and a first zone comprising the I-DEB and the plurality of server blades; the second configuration comprising: at least one non-integrated drive enclosure blade (S-DEB), each connected through DA ports to the first and second switches; the first port of both of the first and second RAID controllers configured as HA ports through which the first and second RAID controllers are accessible to the server blades; the second port of both of the first and second RAID controllers configured as DA ports through which each of the at least one S-DEBs is accessible to the first and second RAID controllers; and a modified first zone and a second zone comprising the I-DEB and the at least one S-DEB.