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On 20 Dec 2007, at 07:26, kashani wrote: |
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> Stroller wrote: |
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>> Just a quick question to see if any of the list members are using |
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>> Gentoo - or any other Linux distro for that matter - on Dell |
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>> PowerEdge 2600 or 2800 servers? |
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>> ... |
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> I used Redhat, Fedora, and Gentoo on 2550, 1650, 2650, 1750, 1850, |
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> and 2850 PowerEdge servers ... |
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Blimey! You obviously know your stuff. So how do you find Gentoo |
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measures up to Redhat / Fedora on these machines? |
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> Other than the CPU/RAM the main different between 2650, 2850, and |
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> 2950 was the SCSI card. I'd choose the 2850 over the 2650 given a |
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> choice for anything with heavy I/O and the 2950 are noticeably |
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> faster than the 2850 for our db stuff. |
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Ours is a 2800, and it's the 2600 that I find most readily / cheaply |
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available. Looks like the xx50 models are the rack-mount & lower- |
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profile models of the same generation. Looks like they're more |
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expensive secondhand and it's not obvious if hot-swap PSUs are |
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available? |
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The machines at this site aren't under high-load, so that's not |
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really a problem. We like this class of servers for the redundancy of |
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the moving-and-failure-prone kind of parts (PSU & disks). |
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If I might ask some follow-up questions: |
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Are the SCSI cards in these models the same brand / chipset / Linux |
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driver, please? |
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Or are they completely different? |
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> The SCSI on 2850's should be megaraid and you want the megaraid-new |
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> driver and Linux kernels would have issues if you tried to build |
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> both new and old so just pick new. (this might have changed in the |
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> past year since I've built a custom kernel for a 2850). I never had |
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> driver issues with any distro provided kernel or my own kernels. |
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Thanks for that pointer. |
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> IIRC you can pull the megarc RPMs from Dell's website and install |
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> them. I never got around to making them work with Gentoo, but it |
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> shouldn't be terribly hard. I don't know of anything in the normal |
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> driver that will tell you any ifo about status or failed drives, |
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> but I never looked that hard. |
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Hmmmn... googling a bit further I find that `megarc` are the |
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userspace utilities for these cards, and that they're only available |
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as binaries. I feel my enthusiasm for these units flagging - the cost |
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savings of buying secondhand aren't so much that I wouldn't rather |
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find a fully-OSS alternative. |
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> I bought most of my 2850's about two years ago. Dual Xeon's, 8GB, 6 |
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> x 10k 146GB drives, and remote management card for about $4000. |
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Yeah, we paid £1300, I think, at about the same time. Dual Xeons & |
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the DRAC, but much less RAM & disk-space. |
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Stroller.-- |
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