Controlling multiple status indicators for electronic equipment housed in an electronic equipment chassis

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12193179-B2
Application number	US-202217580821-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 21, 2022
Priority date	Jan 21, 2022
Publication date	Jan 7, 2025
Grant date	Jan 7, 2025

Abstract

An apparatus comprises an electronic equipment chassis comprising a housing and at least one lid, the housing comprising a control panel with a first set of one or more status indicators. The apparatus also comprises at least one latch configured for securing the at least one lid to the housing, the at least one latch comprising a second set of one or more status indicators. The apparatus further comprises a processing device configured to determine status information for electronic equipment housed in the electronic equipment chassis, the status information characterizing whether at least one of opening and removing the at least one lid is safe to perform at a given time, and controlling, based at least in part on the determined status information, at least one of the first set of indicators and at least one of the second set of indicators.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An apparatus comprising:
an electronic equipment chassis comprising a housing and at least one lid, the housing comprising a control panel with a first set of one or more status indicators;
at least one latch configured for securing the at least one lid to the housing, the at least one latch comprising a second set of one or more status indicators; and
at least one processing device comprising a processor coupled to a memory;
the at least one processing device being configured to perform steps of:
determining status information for electronic equipment housed in the electronic equipment chassis, the status information characterizing whether at least one of opening and removing the at least one lid is safe to perform at a given time; and
controlling, based at least in part on the determined status information, (i) at least one of the first set of one or more status indicators and (ii) at least one of the second set of one or more status indicators;

wherein controlling (i) the at least one of the first set of one or more status indicators and (ii) the at least one of the second set of one or more status indicators comprises activating one of a plurality of different status indicator patterns, the activated one of the plurality of different status indicator patterns being selected based at least in part on determining a relative risk associated with at least one of opening and removing the at least one lid at the given time.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein determining the status information comprises determining whether one or more designated types of operations are at least one of currently being performed and scheduled to be performed within a designated period of time from a current time utilizing the electronic equipment housed in the electronic equipment chassis.

3. The apparatus of claim 2 wherein the electronic equipment housed in the electronic equipment chassis comprises at least one computing device, and wherein the one or more designated types of operations comprise one or more shutdown operations performed on the at least one computing device in response to disruption of power supplied to the at least one computing device.

4. The apparatus of claim 3 wherein the one or more shutdown operations performed on the at least one computing device in response to disruption of power supplied to the at least one computing device comprise persisting data stored in volatile memory of the at least one computing device to non-volatile memory.

5. The apparatus of claim 3 wherein the electronic equipment housed in the electronic equipment chassis comprises a storage system, and wherein the one or more designated types of operations comprise one or more data caching operations.

6. The apparatus of claim 5 wherein at least one of opening and removing the at least one lid while the one or more data caching operations are being performed results in potential data loss in the storage system.

7. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the at least one of the first set of one or more status indicators and the at least one of the second set of one or more status indicators each comprise one or more indicator lights.

8. The apparatus of claim 7 wherein controlling (i) the at least one of the first set of one or more status indicators and (ii) the at least one of the second set of one or more status indicators based at least in part on the determined status information comprises:
activating a first designated light pattern utilizing the one or more indicator lights responsive to the determined status information characterizing that at least one of opening and removing the at least one lid is safe to perform at the given time; and
activating a second designated light pattern utilizing the one or more indicator lights responsive to the determined status information characterizing that at least one of opening and removing the at least one lid is not safe to perform at the given time.

9. The apparatus of claim 8 wherein the second designated light pattern is selected from among a set of possible light patterns based at least in part on the relative risk associated with at least one of opening and removing the at least one lid at the given time, the relative risk being based at least in part on one or more designated types of operations that are at least one of currently being performed and are scheduled to be performed within a designated period of time from a current time utilizing the electronic equipment housed in the electronic equipment chassis.

10. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the at least one latch is located over at least a portion of a battery backup unit circuit board of the electronic equipment housed in the electronic equipment chassis.

11. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the at least one latch comprises one or more luminous holes aligned with one or more light-emitting diodes of the battery backup unit circuit board, the one or more light-emitting diodes providing the second set of one or more status indicators.

12. The apparatus of claim 11 further comprising one or more light pipes and associated light pipe holders aligning the one or more luminous holes of the at least one latch with the one or more light-emitting diodes of the battery backup unit circuit board.

13. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the control panel comprises a front of the housing of the electronic equipment chassis that is visible when the electronic equipment chassis in mounted in one or more equipment racks.

14. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the at least one processing device is further configured to perform the step of controlling, based at least in part on the determined status information, at least one of a third set of one or more status indicators presented via a graphical user interface of a controller that monitors the electronic equipment housed in the electronic equipment chassis.

15. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory processor-readable storage medium having stored therein program code of one or more software programs, wherein the program code when executed by at least one processing device causes the at least one processing device to perform steps of:
determining status information for electronic equipment housed in an electronic equipment chassis comprising a housing and at least one lid, the status information characterizing whether at least one of opening and removing the at least one lid is safe to perform at a given time; and
controlling, based at least in part on the determined status information, (i) at least one of a first set of one or more status indicators of a control panel of the housing of the electronic equipment chassis and (ii) at least one of a second set of one or more status indicators proximate at least one latch configured for securing the at least one lid to the housing of the electronic equipment chassis;
wherein controlling (i) the at least one of the first set of one or more status indicators and (ii) the at least one of the second set of one or more status indicators comprises activating one of a plurality of different status indicator patterns, the activated one of the plurality of different status indicator patterns being selected based at least in part on determining a relative risk associated with at least one of opening and removing the at least one lid at the given time.

16. The computer program product of claim 15 wherein determining the status information comprises determining whether one or more designated types of operations are at least one of currently being performed and scheduled to be performed within a designated perio

Assignees

• Dell Products Lp

Inventors

• Maguire Amrita Sidhu
• Chen Yuxin
• Chen Zhao
• Sun Lizzy Yi
• Graham Eric Thomas

Classifications

• G05B23/0208

  characterized by the configuration of the monitoring system · CPC title

• G06F1/1683

  for the transmission of signal or power between the different housings, e.g. details of wired or wireless communication, passage of cabling · CPC title

• H05K7/1487

  Blade assemblies, e.g. blade cases or inner arrangements within a blade · CPC title

• H05K7/1494

  having hardware for monitoring blades, e.g. keyboards, displays (methods or software therefore H05K7/1498) · CPC title

• G06F3/0482

  Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus · CPC title