[CentOS] Re: (OT) Opteron in 32-bit mode

Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith at ieee.org
Tue Aug 2 15:08:37 UTC 2005


Peter Arremann <loony at loonybin.org> wrote:
> I have to agree with you there. Unless you're willing to
> set up the whole console setup (NSV and all) the box is a
> pain to deal with.
> If you set up everything properly, you get SNMP for 
> monitoring at least (which is better than nothing)... 

Which is one of the reasons why when I went to setup one of
these boxes for a small engineering firm, they weren't
willing to pay me to do so.

> If you only have a few of these servers NSV is a huge pain.
> If you have several racks full, you can actually see the
> benefits of this design and understand why they did what 
> they did.

That's what I figured, based on what I read in the docs,
but didn't have the time to try it out.

> Until then, you're left with either a useless SP or a setup
> that is stupid and "unusual" - just something else you need
> to learn. 
> The setup you have to do on the OS side is Intel's fault 
> (http://www.intel.com/design/servers/ipmi/) - and not a
> design that newisys did themselves... if this spec lives
> on, some day you might have os support by default... 

Ahhh, now that explains it.  I'll have to read more on this
(although it suprises me that Intel didn't try to force an
XScale on everyone ;-).

Definitely thanx for the link!  I figured a tier-2 OEM
designer couldn't have come up with all this on their own.  I
didn't know it was Intel's IPMI, which is what I heard they
came up for IA-64/Itanium2 IIRC.

> Compay btw, also required you to load software to have
> fully functional RIB functionality - its just part of
> their cd set...

Yep.  Done that too many times -- both Linux and Windows.
I wouldn't call it "straight-forward" either, especially
since some of HP's management software/merger with Compaq
has required me to update a number of Proliant Service
Packs (PSPs) to work correctly/more securely.

> I don't think that the v40z being an older design should
> say much here. After all its been out there for a while
> and SUN will sell you the boxes even after Galaxy is out. 

There's something to be said about three (3) AMD8131
HyperTransport bridges in a system, with four (4) of the
slots being dedicated, full 133MHz PCI-X slots.

> I can completely agree with this statement. Depending on
> what we do, we often run the v40z without SP at all - as
> a plain dumb box without management.

Which is the only time I set on up.

> The board, the layout of the box (hardware) and all is
> great...

Okay, this is what I wanted to confirm.  In the one unit
I personally deployed, I felt the same.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                | Sent from Yahoo Mail
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org     |  (please excuse any
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/ |   missing headers)



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