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On 14 Feb 2007, at 11:41, Mike Williams wrote: |
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> On Wednesday 14 February 2007 11:15, Stroller wrote: |
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>> I'm looking to deploy a couple of servers for Gentoo use & I'm |
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>> wondering if anyone has any recommendations. There requirements for |
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>> each are slightly different, but what is in common is that I want |
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>> hotswap SATA hard-drives (a simple mirror RAID is probably fine) & |
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>> PSUs. |
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> |
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> I'm having a pleasant experience with http://www.boston.co.uk |
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> Supermicro stuff is really good, and cheap (when it comes to pre- |
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> built server |
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> style hardware). |
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> Boston can supply everything and anything Supermicro make. |
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Yeah, I did look at Supermicro. Might be great for my own server, but |
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not sure about for my customers - my concern is that Supermicro seem |
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to be the manufacturer & they have several distributors in each country. |
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It's not much good if I need a spare (one half of a pair of redundant |
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PSUs, for instance) in two years time and the supplier says, "sorry, |
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mate, we don't stock that model any more". Do you know if either |
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Supermicro or Boston have policies to cover this sort of thing? If I |
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were deploying several servers I might consider buying one or two |
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extra for spares, but that's not practicable on this occasion. |
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This is why I like the thought of Dell, HP or IBM. But I thought I'd |
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see if anyone here had any recent experience of their Linux support |
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before I phoned their salesmen to hear how great it is. My Compaq - |
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admittedly a machine that's 6 or 8 years old, now - has very spotty |
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Linux support; drivers for the RAID hardware are in the main kernel |
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tree (which is GREAT!) but the source RPMs available for diagnostic |
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stuff were a bit of a chore to install on Gentoo and some features |
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(like fan speed) were only available under Windows. It'd be really |
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nice to do a little better than that this time around. |
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What Supermicro systems are you using, please? And how are you |
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finding the Linux support? |
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For instance the 7044H-TR has 4 x internal cooling fans & 2 x rear |
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exhaust fans and the manual (<http://www.supermicro.com/manuals/ |
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superserver/4U/MNL-0775.pdf>, section 7-17) explains that the BIOS |
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"option is set to "3-pin fan", the fan speed is controlled based upon |
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the CPU die temperature. ... set to "4-pin", the fan speed will be |
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controlled by the Thermal Management Settings pre-configured by the |
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user". I'm not quite clear whether this is entirely managed by the |
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BIOS or whether it needs o/s / kernel support, too? |
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Stroller. |
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-- |
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