Hi there.
I got myself a pair of old Intel Xeon blades, which I plan to repurpose with CentOS. The model is : HP bl20p-g3 server blade
Manual http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12322_ca/12322_ca.pdf
Now, the main problem with this hardware is that LVD UW SCSI HDDs are hard to find and hella expensive if you find em (and of reduced capacity). Any of you know:
1. If there's any third party maker of any daughtercard offering SATA ports? The main board of the system has daughtercard sockets allowing for instance SFP ports http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_form-factor_pluggable_transceiver Seems to me that there'd be a small but interesting niche for this kind of adapter.
2. If it's possible to use BootP for booting off a network drive? I know there are some UWSCSI to SATA adapter daughtercards but those sell for $250 which is way over my budget.
So, if you had one of these blades but not any UWSCSI HDDs what would you do?
Thanks in advance for any pointer. This hardware is too good to back to the dumpster where I got mines from... FC
Hello Fernando,
This drive-technology was replaced 7 years ago and the cpu's are that old as well.
Better buy some 1HE Servers with an actual i3 and 500GB SATA-HDD for less than the price of an old LVD-UW-SCSI drive. With these old blades you just have excessive power-consumption, heat, low performance. We had hundreds of these old drives from storages and DMZ-servers with R1, but because of security agreements they were all shreddered. I am afraid most people that used a lot of such expensive disks have some "keep your disk" agreement and destroy them.
You can always boot your system from a stick and mount your root-fs from storage. That is a standard procedure for many virtualization-setups and DMZ-proxy/fastcgi.
mit freundlichen Grüßen Christian Freund ------------------------------------------- Christian Freund - freund@wrz.de
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] Im Auftrag von Fernando Cassia Gesendet: Freitag, 11. April 2014 04:10 An: CentOS mailing list Betreff: [CentOS] Old HP Xeon server blade with only SCSI HDD ports & CentOS
Hi there.
I got myself a pair of old Intel Xeon blades, which I plan to repurpose with CentOS. The model is : HP bl20p-g3 server blade
Manual http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12322_ca/12322_ca.pdf
Now, the main problem with this hardware is that LVD UW SCSI HDDs are hard to find and hella expensive if you find em (and of reduced capacity). Any of you know:
1. If there's any third party maker of any daughtercard offering SATA ports? The main board of the system has daughtercard sockets allowing for instance SFP ports http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_form-factor_pluggable_transceiver Seems to me that there'd be a small but interesting niche for this kind of adapter.
2. If it's possible to use BootP for booting off a network drive? I know there are some UWSCSI to SATA adapter daughtercards but those sell for $250 which is way over my budget.
So, if you had one of these blades but not any UWSCSI HDDs what would you do?
Thanks in advance for any pointer. This hardware is too good to back to the dumpster where I got mines from... FC -- During times of Universal Deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act Durante épocas de Engaño Universal, decir la verdad se convierte en un Acto Revolucionario - George Orwell _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 6:25 AM, Christian Freund freund@wrz.de wrote:
Hello Fernando,
This drive-technology was replaced 7 years ago and the cpu's are that old as well.
Yes, I figured that because of the HDD technology. I wasn´t sure of the 7 years or 5 years but I figured it was close to that timeframe. But you know, I´m typing this on a dual-core AMD Opteron purchased in 2008 so... old ancient hardware is the name of the game for me. ;)
Better buy some 1HE Servers with an actual i3 and 500GB SATA-HDD for less than the price of an old LVD-UW-SCSI drive. With these old blades you just have excessive power-consumption, heat, low performance.
Yep, I agree with you that buying a SCSI HDD is a big no-no. Since my current budget is zero, and I´ve picked up these blades from a dumpster, buying a new blade is not an alternative, because I never a had a budget to begin with... I´m just trying to get this to work just for the heck of it and see if I can turn this "gift" into a CentOS server, plus if I can make it to work it will be nice to have a spare system to run some stuff isolated from my main server.
I think I´ve found a solution: there´s a daughtercard that apparently includes a Mini-PCIe slot. In this, I figure I could add a half-height card with USB 3.0 and/or SATA controller. If the blade BIOS will recognize it and allow it to boot, that remains to be seen. This hardware is (or was) enterprise grade and is way out of my league. I´ve only built AMD Opteron servers myself, but in the PC tower form factor. It´s the first time I´m looking at a blade from the inside.
So, is there a mailing list other than CentOS where I could find people knowledgeable about the internals of these blades? Right now my top priority is finding if I can hack a 48V DC power supply to the odd (proprietary? or de-facto blade standard?) connector at the back of the blade. I don´t want to pollute this list more with hardware-related messages.
Thanks a bunch for replying! FC
Hello Fernando,
a "blade"-server has the idea to save space and share resources of the fitting enclosure, like SAN(or only SAN-switch), Network-Switch and Power-Supply.
I didn't know that it is a "play-out-hack-project" to get an ancient junk-blade running without its enclosure. In that case you better isolate the board from the casing and somehow rivet it into one of your mini-towers. ;-) CentOS will run fine on that.
Feel free to personally email me (especially when you got that thing working). Sounds funny.
mit freundlichen Grüßen Christian Freund ------------------------------------------- Christian Freund - freund@wrz.de
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] Im Auftrag von Fernando Cassia Gesendet: Freitag, 11. April 2014 14:52 An: CentOS mailing list Betreff: Re: [CentOS] Old HP Xeon server blade with only SCSI HDD ports & CentOS
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 6:25 AM, Christian Freund freund@wrz.de wrote:
Hello Fernando,
This drive-technology was replaced 7 years ago and the cpu's are that old as well.
Yes, I figured that because of the HDD technology. I wasn´t sure of the 7 years or 5 years but I figured it was close to that timeframe. But you know, I´m typing this on a dual-core AMD Opteron purchased in 2008 so... old ancient hardware is the name of the game for me. ;)
Better buy some 1HE Servers with an actual i3 and 500GB SATA-HDD for less than the price of an old LVD-UW-SCSI drive. With these old blades you just have excessive power-consumption, heat, low performance.
Yep, I agree with you that buying a SCSI HDD is a big no-no. Since my current budget is zero, and I´ve picked up these blades from a dumpster, buying a new blade is not an alternative, because I never a had a budget to begin with... I´m just trying to get this to work just for the heck of it and see if I can turn this "gift" into a CentOS server, plus if I can make it to work it will be nice to have a spare system to run some stuff isolated from my main server.
I think I´ve found a solution: there´s a daughtercard that apparently includes a Mini-PCIe slot. In this, I figure I could add a half-height card with USB 3.0 and/or SATA controller. If the blade BIOS will recognize it and allow it to boot, that remains to be seen. This hardware is (or was) enterprise grade and is way out of my league. I´ve only built AMD Opteron servers myself, but in the PC tower form factor. It´s the first time I´m looking at a blade from the inside.
So, is there a mailing list other than CentOS where I could find people knowledgeable about the internals of these blades? Right now my top priority is finding if I can hack a 48V DC power supply to the odd (proprietary? or de-facto blade standard?) connector at the back of the blade. I don´t want to pollute this list more with hardware-related messages.
Thanks a bunch for replying! FC -- During times of Universal Deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act - George Orwell _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Christian Freund wrote:
Hello Fernando,
a "blade"-server has the idea to save space and share resources of the fitting enclosure, like SAN(or only SAN-switch), Network-Switch and Power-Supply.
I didn't know that it is a "play-out-hack-project" to get an ancient junk-blade running without its enclosure. In that case you better isolate the board from the casing and somehow rivet it into one of your mini-towers. ;-) CentOS will run fine on that.
<snip> Oh. Urk. You need it inside something, and a lot of it is in the slot that the blade plugs into. I take it there was no enclosure in the dumpster?
For that matter, do you have any idea if it's worth spending the time on? It could have been tossed because it was old... but I'd wonder if it was tossed because either the m/b or the CPU failed. Memory's not a big deal, but....
Another thought: *carefully* examine the m/b. Techie friends have talked at length about capacitors burning out.
You also need to figure out if it will run not in a case. Cooling is a *REAL* issue - you have to have a really good airflow over the CPU and DIMMs is there a shroud in there, to channel the airflow?
mark mark
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:38 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Another thought: *carefully* examine the m/b. Techie friends have talked at length about capacitors burning out.
It's in mint condition.... not even too much dust on the blade fans... The caps are all OK as well...
That's why I picked up in the first place. Would hate to see it sold as metal junk and torn to pieces with a large sledgehammer.
FC
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:38 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
It could have been tossed because it was old... but I'd wonder if it was tossed because either the m/b or the CPU failed.
the guy who was throwing it into a dumpster bin when I walked by clearly knew something about servers, but didn't have much idea about what he was throwing out. He sounded like a fresh sysadmin. He told me "I have another like this that we might throw out, we can't get disks for them, and we're buying a new server anyway so..."
FC
Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 6:25 AM, Christian Freund freund@wrz.de wrote:
Yes, I figured that because of the HDD technology. I wasn´t sure of the 7 years or 5 years but I figured it was close to that timeframe. But you know, I´m typing this on a dual-core AMD Opteron purchased in 2008 so... old ancient hardware is the name of the game for me. ;)
I hate to say it, but that dual-core Opteron may be as powerful, or more so, than the blade. But (I missed the beginning of this thread) have you opened it up? It's *possible* that there might be a SATA connector on the m/b. Certainly, we have servers from '08 or so that use SATA.
And drives - you can pick up "small" drives - 400G and under - fairly cheaply, though 1 TB wouldn't be that expensive. <snip>
I think I´ve found a solution: there´s a daughtercard that apparently
Daughtercard, or riser? Riser might hold 2 expansion slots.
includes a Mini-PCIe slot. In this, I figure I could add a half-height card with USB 3.0 and/or SATA controller. If the blade BIOS will
You might need "low profile", but you can find them. Since you're doing this on your own, you can use places that, say, I can't, like eBay.
recognize it and allow it to boot, that remains to be seen. This
That should be in the BIOS options. <snip>
So, is there a mailing list other than CentOS where I could find people knowledgeable about the internals of these blades? Right now my top priority is finding if I can hack a 48V DC power supply to the odd (proprietary? or de-facto blade standard?) connector at the back of the blade. I don´t want to pollute this list more with hardware-related messages.
Again, you could hit eBay for a power supply. But all the servers, including blades, that I ever worked with were 120v or 220V (ok, this is the US). Is the psu in the box dead? <snip> mark
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:28 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Again, you could hit eBay for a power supply. But all the servers, including blades, that I ever worked with were 120v or 220V (ok, this is the US). Is the psu in the box dead?
There's no PSU in the box. I've got the enclosure as well! It's one of these http://www.harddrivesdirect.com/product_info.php?products_id=142183
In the back all the blades are connected to an interconnect power regulator board that goes to two large round prongs the kind used in 20 AMP 220/240 V AC plugs. But right now I'm 99% sure right now that this works with 48VDC. The blades have tiny power regulator boards next to the (proprietary?) blade power connector... and on the internal side of such connector the markings say "48V" for the white wire and "0V" for the black wire.
FC
FC
Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:28 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Again, you could hit eBay for a power supply. But all the servers, including blades, that I ever worked with were 120v or 220V (ok, this is the US). Is the psu in the box dead?
There's no PSU in the box. I've got the enclosure as well! It's one of these http://www.harddrivesdirect.com/product_info.php?products_id=142183
In the back all the blades are connected to an interconnect power regulator board that goes to two large round prongs the kind used in 20 AMP 220/240 V AC plugs. But right now I'm 99% sure right now that this works with 48VDC. The blades have tiny power regulator boards next to the (proprietary?) blade power connector... and on the internal side of such connector the markings say "48V" for the white wire and "0V" for the black wire.
<mark googles 380625-B22 Blade Serve manual, and the first useful hit is: http://h20566.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/template.PAGE/public/kb/docDisplay?javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.prp_ba847bafb2a2d782fcbb0710b053ce01=wsrp-navigationalState%3DdocId%253Demr_na-c00375484-3%257CdocLocale%253D%257CcalledBy%253D&javax.portlet.tpst=ba847bafb2a2d782fcbb0710b053ce01&ac.admitted=1397227350520.876444892.199480143
Hope that helps....
mark
Oh, right - um, the obvious question (once I thought about it): can you actually plug this thing in at home, or is it going to pop the breaker when it tries to draw more current than the breaker's designed for?
mark
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:48 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Oh, right - um, the obvious question (once I thought about it): can you actually plug this thing in at home, or is it going to pop the breaker when it tries to draw more current than the breaker's designed for?
I don't have no 48V DC power supply yet.
By Googling I've found that there's an adapter cable I can buy to get standard VGA/Ethernet/USB ports out of each blade. http://www.amazon.com/HP-Crossover-Connection-Proliant-Enclosures/dp/B007P6R...
But sadly there´s a missing cable that interconnects the PC-ILO female sockets at the enclosure with some interconnect backplane (at first I thought those were Ethernet but no, there is s a management socket for every blade, where you can connect the above cables...).
I feel like I´m polluting this list. I´ve googled but couldn´t find any specific mailing lists for HP blades, or even blades in general... I´m sure there´s corporate sysadmins familiar with this stuff somewhere...
FC
Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:48 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Oh, right - um, the obvious question (once I thought about it): can you actually plug this thing in at home, or is it going to pop the breaker when it tries to draw more current than the breaker's designed for?
I don't have no 48V DC power supply yet.
I think you misunderstood me: this suckers gonna draw a LOT of watts. Your home house wiring may not carry enough current per circuit breaker to run it.
By Googling I've found that there's an adapter cable I can buy to get standard VGA/Ethernet/USB ports out of each blade. http://www.amazon.com/HP-Crossover-Connection-Proliant-Enclosures/dp/B007P6R...
But sadly there´s a missing cable that interconnects the PC-ILO female sockets at the enclosure with some interconnect backplane (at first I thought those were Ethernet but no, there is s a management socket for every blade, where you can connect the above cables...).
Are you in the US? I have a place in New York state that I *just* discovered a couple weeks ago, to my (and several users and their managers) joy: FrozenPC.com, who will *make* custom cables, and they're *very* reasonable and fast. I was looking for what should have been a "standard PCIe splitter or Y power cord - we needed two for a couple of Tesla cards on riser cards in a Dell R720 server... except all three needed to be male, not one female, and almost no one makes that. I got the quote, and we've ordered them... an off-the-shelf PCIe power cable is $8-$9 USD... and these *custom* cables, they quoted me $14.99 USD. I said they were reasonable....
I *really* like talking up companies who know what they're doing, and do it without the high-priced spread. <g>
I feel like I´m polluting this list. I´ve googled but couldn´t find any specific mailing lists for HP blades, or even blades in general... I´m sure there´s corporate sysadmins familiar with this stuff somewhere...
We've got several blade systems here. I'm not a fan of them: they sell them with "they're so easy to upgrade", so you buy and use them for a few years, and, oh, gee, the new ones don't use the old backplane connector, but we'll be happy to sell you a whole new system....
mark "and let's not forget the special connector that goes on the front of the HP SL230S that you *must* have to plug in a monitor...."
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 12:13 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
I think you misunderstood me: this suckers gonna draw a LOT of watts. Your home house wiring may not carry enough current per circuit breaker to run it.
How many watts? You mean this thing (a single blade) eats more than 1000 watts? I can procure one 800-W 48V DC switching power supply locally for a few $.
Perhaps I didn't describe it properly. What I picked up is the FULL ENCLOSURE with only TWO Xeon blades. The rest are fitted with I could only describe as "dummy blades" that are empty tin cases with a front plastic handle. I guess those are used as placeholders for the rest of the blades that you can eventually install in the enclosure...
btw: I'm down at the Southern end of South America... .AR more precisely. FC
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 12:21 PM, Christian Freund freund@wrz.de wrote:
lmao ;-) You mean like 141W peak consumption, while his toaster needs
2200W?
Maybe he was thinking of a rack enclosure full of blades. I forgot to say that the enclosure can fit eight blades, the enclosure only had two. The rest are dummy placeholders aka empty tin can blades. (which, btw, I think are great for fitting a lot of RasPi(s) ;-).
FC
Christian Freund wrote:
I think you misunderstood me: this suckers gonna draw a LOT of watts. Your home house wiring may not carry enough current per circuit breaker to run it.
lmao ;-) You mean like 141W peak consumption, while his toaster needs 2200W?
You think that's all the one blade, with support and h/d etc will need?
2.2KW for a toaster?! I've never seen one of those - what are you toasting, or is that a burnout furnace for lost-wax casting?
mark
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:09 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
lmao ;-) You mean like 141W peak consumption, while his toaster needs 2200W?
You think that's all the one blade, with support and h/d etc will need?
Don´t fight guys, please. :))
I´ve found more info, I only had to read the sticker on the back of the enclosure. It reads "48V DC. 62.5 AMPS max per shelf. Dual circuits (A+B) for redundancy"
The dual male plugs marked "POWER CIRCUIT A" and "POWER CIRCUIT B" means exactly that. The Beast has two independent 48V DC imputs, for redundancy.
But the positive and negative on each of the two not marked AT ALL and it seems to me that the male round plugs protuding are totally reversible (!?), so there´s a big possibility of frying everything if I get polarity backwards...
Oh, Dear God of HP blades, we invoke you... Maybe on the BSD lists they´d have a clue?.
FC
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:54 PM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
thats 3000 watts each.
Just like my oil-filled radiator heaters... http://goo.gl/mO9Rzo
btw: found the CPU inside the blades are 380632-B21: (1) Intel® Xeon™ 3.0GHz standard (up to 2 supported)
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/id/en/un/WF06a/100008-200001-200001-200001-30... https://h10057.www1.hp.com/ecomcat/hpcatalog/specs/provisioner/99/347957-B21...
But I guess that's a maximum. Two SCSI HDDs and two 3Ghz Xeons...
Hmmm the more I think of this, the more it feels like winning the dumpster diving jackpot ;) If it wasn't for its bloody SCSI HDD interface....
...and the 48V power.
FC
On 4/11/2014 11:05 AM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
...and the 48V power.
4 large healthy car car batteries in serial will run it for a few hours on a charge. 48VDC is telco power, which is positive ground, negative 'juice'
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:15 PM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
4 large healthy car car batteries in serial will run it for a few hours on a charge. 48VDC is telco power, which is positive ground, negative 'juice'
Or two large diesel truck 24VDC batts. Don't you have those up there? Down here I've seen ' em...
I've found a local seller of a 220V AC to 48VDC switching power supply, very inexpensively because it's used (in working condition). But it's only 480W...
FC
Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:54 PM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
thats 3000 watts each.
Just like my oil-filled radiator heaters... http://goo.gl/mO9Rzo
<snip> Aren't those wonderful - and *so* much safer and better than the radiant ones?
mark
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:41 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Aren't those wonderful - and *so* much safer and better than the radiant ones?
Yes, that's why I bought 'em. Mines are 15 yrs old and still running. :o)
But then down here @ BA City we don't have such strong winters like most of the USA http://www.worldweatheronline.com/Buenos-Aires-weather-averages/Distrito-Fed... (for F degrees figures click on 'change units' at top-right of the page).
Sorry, we're getting into OT territory ;) so let me add that with those you can keep your feet warm while you configure your CentOS boxes. <G>
FC
Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:09 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
lmao ;-) You mean like 141W peak consumption, while his toaster needs 2200W?
You think that's all the one blade, with support and h/d etc will need?
Don´t fight guys, please. :))
Hey, he's the one who's using a casting furnace for toast!
I´ve found more info, I only had to read the sticker on the back of the enclosure. It reads "48V DC. 62.5 AMPS max per shelf. Dual circuits (A+B) for redundancy"
Um, er, if it takes six blades, that's 48v*10A, which, wattage-wise, is 480W or so, and so less than your microwave. But the amperage worries me a bit.
The dual male plugs marked "POWER CIRCUIT A" and "POWER CIRCUIT B" means exactly that. The Beast has two independent 48V DC imputs, for redundancy.
But the positive and negative on each of the two not marked AT ALL and it seems to me that the male round plugs protuding are totally reversible (!?), so there´s a big possibility of frying everything if I get polarity backwards...
Oh, Dear God of HP blades, we invoke you... Maybe on the BSD lists they´d have a clue?.
Hmmm... I'd try some HP lists.
mark
Do you mean this URL instead?
In Rochester NY?
MARK H RICHER, MS CS NPS-NCR Digital Forensics Lab IT Manager Computer Science Department Naval Postgraduate School - National Capital Region (NCR) 900 N Glebe Rd, Rmx-apple-data-detectors://21 5-182, Arlington, VA 22203 571.858.3254tel:571.858.3254 (o) 571.303.9498tel:571.303.9498 (m)mhricher@nps.edumailto:mhricher@nps.edu
On Apr 11, 2014, at 11:13, "m.roth@5-cent.usmailto:m.roth@5-cent.us" <m.roth@5-cent.usmailto:m.roth@5-cent.us> wrote:
Fernando Cassia wrote: On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:48 AM, <m.roth@5-cent.usmailto:m.roth@5-cent.us> wrote:
Oh, right - um, the obvious question (once I thought about it): can you actually plug this thing in at home, or is it going to pop the breaker when it tries to draw more current than the breaker's designed for?
I don't have no 48V DC power supply yet.
I think you misunderstood me: this suckers gonna draw a LOT of watts. Your home house wiring may not carry enough current per circuit breaker to run it.
By Googling I've found that there's an adapter cable I can buy to get standard VGA/Ethernet/USB ports out of each blade. http://www.amazon.com/HP-Crossover-Connection-Proliant-Enclosures/dp/B007P6R...
But sadly there´s a missing cable that interconnects the PC-ILO female sockets at the enclosure with some interconnect backplane (at first I thought those were Ethernet but no, there is s a management socket for every blade, where you can connect the above cables...).
Are you in the US? I have a place in New York state that I *just* discovered a couple weeks ago, to my (and several users and their managers) joy: FrozenPC.comhttp://FrozenPC.com, who will *make* custom cables, and they're *very* reasonable and fast. I was looking for what should have been a "standard PCIe splitter or Y power cord - we needed two for a couple of Tesla cards on riser cards in a Dell R720 server... except all three needed to be male, not one female, and almost no one makes that. I got the quote, and we've ordered them... an off-the-shelf PCIe power cable is $8-$9 USD... and these *custom* cables, they quoted me $14.99 USD. I said they were reasonable....
I *really* like talking up companies who know what they're doing, and do it without the high-priced spread. <g>
I feel like I´m polluting this list. I´ve googled but couldn´t find any specific mailing lists for HP blades, or even blades in general... I´m sure there´s corporate sysadmins familiar with this stuff somewhere...
We've got several blade systems here. I'm not a fan of them: they sell them with "they're so easy to upgrade", so you buy and use them for a few years, and, oh, gee, the new ones don't use the old backplane connector, but we'll be happy to sell you a whole new system....
mark "and let's not forget the special connector that goes on the front of the HP SL230S that you *must* have to plug in a monitor...."
_______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.orgmailto:CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Richer, Mark (CIV) wrote:
Do you mean this URL instead?
In Rochester NY?
I did correct myself in a later post, but yes, they're the folks.
mark
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 2:17 PM, Richer, Mark (CIV) mhricher@nps.eduwrote:
Are you in the US? I have a place in New York state that I *just* discovered a couple weeks ago, to my (and several users and their managers) joy: FrozenPC.comhttp://FrozenPC.com, who will *make* custom cables, and they're *very* reasonable and fast. (...)an off-the-shelf PCIe power cable is $8-$9 USD... and these *custom* cables, they quoted me $14.99 USD. I said they were reasonable....
Excellent info, thanks a bunch Mark!.
FC
Am Fri, 11 Apr 2014 11:40:30 -0300 schrieb Fernando Cassia fcassia@gmail.com:
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:28 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Again, you could hit eBay for a power supply. But all the servers, including blades, that I ever worked with were 120v or 220V (ok, this is the US). Is the psu in the box dead?
There's no PSU in the box. I've got the enclosure as well! It's one of these http://www.harddrivesdirect.com/product_info.php?products_id=142183
In the back all the blades are connected to an interconnect power regulator board that goes to two large round prongs the kind used in 20 AMP 220/240 V AC plugs. But right now I'm 99% sure right now that this works with 48VDC. The blades have tiny power regulator boards next to the (proprietary?) blade power connector... and on the internal side of such connector the markings say "48V" for the white wire and "0V" for the black wire.
What about networking?
They either have "shared" networking (AFAIK) or there needs to be a module the lets you connect the blades to a switch...
If you have no budget, blades are the worst to work with ;-)
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Rainer Duffner rainer@ultra-secure.dewrote:
What about networking?
They either have "shared" networking (AFAIK) or there needs to be a module the lets you connect the blades to a switch...
Each of the two blades has its own riser board with 3 Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet chips. But there are no ethernet sockets in the blade itself. It seems the ethernet signals go out of the back of the blade through the propietary connector and then into an array of PC-ILO female sockets on the back
See this http://goo.gl/RfnH5E FC
On 4/11/2014 8:21 AM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
Each of the two blades has its own riser board with 3 Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet chips. But there are no ethernet sockets in the blade itself. It seems the ethernet signals go out of the back of the blade through the propietary connector and then into an array of PC-ILO female sockets on the back
the bladeservers I've seen, the bladechassis has a pair of managed ethernet switch modules in it, this is where all your network ports terminate. the ILO stuff is just for remote console, NOT for your main networking.
those processors in those g3 blades are virtually the same as a pair of P4, each blade has 1 or 2 of one of these...
Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 2.8 GHZ/800MHz - 4MB Single-Core Intel Xeon processor 3.8 GHz/800MHz - 2MB Single-Core Intel Xeon processor 3.4 GHz/800MHz - 2MB Single-Core Intel Xeon processor 3.2 GHz/800MHz - 2MB Single-Core Intel Xeon processor 3.0 GHz/800MHz - 2MB (Low Voltage) Single-Core Intel Xeon processor 3.6 GHz/800MHz - 1MB Single-Core Intel Xeon processor 3.4 GHz/800MHz - 1MB Single-Core Intel Xeon processor 3.2 GHz/800MHz - 1MB Single-Core Intel Xeon processor 2.8 GHz - 1MB (Low-Voltage)
a modern Intel 'Core' processor has 2-3 times the bang per Ghz per core. Those old Xeon's will NOT support 64bit virtualization. They use buffered DDR2 ECC dram, with a max of 8GB per blade. The mezzenaine board are NOT PCI-E, they are proprietary, and they support HP 361426-B21 2Gbps Fiberchannel Host Bus Adapters.
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:07 PM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
a modern Intel 'Core' processor has 2-3 times the bang per Ghz per core.
Keep in mind I'm not running any benchmarks and that I've got this kit from the street for $0. Even if I spend $45 on it to make it work, it'd be faster than a RasPi. ;-)
Those old Xeon's will NOT support 64bit virtualization.
I don't care as I have my AMD Opteron with AMD-V for that ;)
They use buffered DDR2 ECC dram, with a max of 8GB per blade.
But good enough for a single CentOS and Apache... instance... :)
The mezzenaine board are NOT PCI-E, they are proprietary, and they support HP 361426-B21 2Gbps Fiberchannel Host Bus Adapters.
Thanks for the heads up wrt the above!. Finally some hard data.
FC
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 1:17 PM, Fernando Cassia fcassia@gmail.com wrote:
Those old Xeon's will NOT support 64bit virtualization.
I don't care as I have my AMD Opteron with AMD-V for that ;)
So... wouldn't it be a lot more practical to run a VM or 2 there than whatever you were planning for that power-sucking chassis even if you did have the right power supply?
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:25 PM, Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
So... wouldn't it be a lot more practical to run a VM or 2 there than whatever you were planning for that power-sucking chassis even if you did have the right power supply?
I'm still in the pipe dream phase. :) I'm sure eventually I'll find a real use for it.;) So thanks for the suggestion, once I stop daydreaming I will.
FC
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 1:28 PM, Fernando Cassia fcassia@gmail.com wrote:
So... wouldn't it be a lot more practical to run a VM or 2 there than whatever you were planning for that power-sucking chassis even if you did have the right power supply?
I'm still in the pipe dream phase. :) I'm sure eventually I'll find a real use for it.;) So thanks for the suggestion, once I stop daydreaming I will.
Unless you need the space-heater functionality it is hard to beat a VM for the experimental stages of anything. Generally you can just download an iso image to the host, map the file as the guest DVD, and boot into whatever you want.
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:49 PM, Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
Unless you need the space-heater functionality it is hard to beat a VM for the experimental stages of anything. Generally you can just download an iso image to the host, map the file as the guest DVD, and boot into whatever you want.
Yes, I use Virtualbox on my AMD Opteron box because of its AMD-V support since it makes virtualization faster.. Oh, I get what you mean now. Continued 24/7 use of the blades will hit my power bill whereas the AMD-V Opteron is more power efficient. Got it. :)
FC
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 1:52 PM, Fernando Cassia fcassia@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:49 PM, Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
Unless you need the space-heater functionality it is hard to beat a VM for the experimental stages of anything. Generally you can just download an iso image to the host, map the file as the guest DVD, and boot into whatever you want.
Yes, I use Virtualbox on my AMD Opteron box because of its AMD-V support since it makes virtualization faster.. Oh, I get what you mean now. Continued 24/7 use of the blades will hit my power bill whereas the AMD-V Opteron is more power efficient. Got it. :)
Yes - maintaining old junk might have been worth it (and sometimes fun...) when computing power was expensive, but now it is going to cost you both time and money to keep it compared to using something current. And don't forget that besides the direct power consumption you'll also pay to air-condition that extra heat away if you run it it the summer.
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:07 PM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
and they support HP 361426-B21 2Gbps Fiberchannel Host Bus Adapters.
I know what it is for (SAN) but I've never worked with fiberchannel. Can I get SATA ports out of this though some adapter? Like http://www.ebay.com/itm/LOT-OF-10-Emulex-250-076-900D-SATA-TO-FIBRE-CHANNEL-...
btw: what is wrong with HP? The pictures are so tiny that they're virtually useless
see https://h10057.www1.hp.com/ecomcat/hpcatalog/specs/provisioner/99/361426-B21... useless thumbnail pic! FC
On 4/11/2014 11:26 AM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
I know what it is for (SAN) but I've never worked with fiberchannel. Can I get SATA ports out of this though some adapter? Like http://www.ebay.com/itm/LOT-OF-10-Emulex-250-076-900D-SATA-TO-FIBRE-CHANNEL-...
FC infrastucture is very expensive, it would be insane to use it to run a SATA adapter so you could use a cheap drive.
btw: what is wrong with HP? The pictures are so tiny that they're virtually useless
see https://h10057.www1.hp.com/ecomcat/hpcatalog/specs/provisioner/99/361426-B21... useless thumbnail pic!
obsolete products, old catalog info.
anyways, I looked up that ISP2312 QLogic chip on the FC HBA, its is PCI-X, not PCI-E, and again, its on a proprietary mezzenaine form factor.
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:35 PM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
looked up that ISP2312 QLogic chip on the FC HBA, its is PCI-X, not PCI-E, and again, its on a proprietary mezzenaine form factor.
I come from the Amiga world where tiny firms designed all sorts of mezzanine adapter boards to add functions to the obsolete Commodore mobos... ;) so nothing is *technically* impossible. <G>
FC
John R Pierce wrote:
On 4/11/2014 11:26 AM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
I know what it is for (SAN) but I've never worked with fiberchannel. Can I get SATA ports out of this though some adapter? Like http://www.ebay.com/itm/LOT-OF-10-Emulex-250-076-900D-SATA-TO-FIBRE-CHANNEL-...
FC infrastucture is very expensive, it would be insane to use it to run a SATA adapter so you could use a cheap drive.
Yeah. I just recently had to find a couple of HP short (.5m) fibre channel cables for an older HP dl380 to an HP RAID box, and after *much* searching, found them for $22 USD each.
btw: what is wrong with HP? The pictures are so tiny that they're virtually useless
I'm *really* underwhelmed by HP in general. Lots of proprietary stuff, and latest is that you can't *get* some updates unless you have a support contract. Then there was the firmware update that I had to extract from a self-extracting .exe, and when I finally tried it, it just ran - I'm spoiled by Dell's firmware updates, that will happily run under CentOS, *and* give you warm fuzzies (collecting data - this update is, in fact, for this hardware, and is newer than what you have installed, would you like to update" before it does the update). <snip> mark
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Rainer Duffner rainer@ultra-secure.dewrote:
If you have no budget, blades are the worst to work with ;-)
I'm beginning to realize that. ;-). But think about it, if I can get it to work (even with no HDD and over the network booting) that'd be a fun weekend project.
FC
Fernando Cassia wrote:
On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Rainer Duffner rainer@ultra-secure.dewrote:
If you have no budget, blades are the worst to work with ;-)
I'm beginning to realize that. ;-). But think about it, if I can get it to work (even with no HDD and over the network booting) that'd be a fun weekend project.
Weekend project, um, yeah, after you buy all the extra parts, like that cable set....
Around '08, I bought an HO scale model steam locomotive kit, maybe 35 years old, "partly assembled". Then I spent at least half again as much buying the missing parts. Then I started work.... I did finish it, eventually, and it looks *marvelous*.
I've also said that I had *way* more "fun" (for certain values of "fun") than I'd planned on. I also say "I've done that, I don't *EVER* have to do it again".
mark, remembering too many times carefully shaking the rug, and finding the marker "jewels" (too small for a tweezers) in the dust....
Hello Fernando,
This drive-technology was replaced 7 years ago and the cpu's are that old as well.
Better buy some 1HE Servers with an actual i3 and 500GB SATA-HDD for less than the price of an old LVD-UW-SCSI drive. With these old blades you just have excessive power-consumption, heat, low performance. We had hundreds of these old drives from storages and DMZ-servers with R1, but because of security agreements they were all shreddered. I am afraid most people that used a lot of such expensive disks have some "keep your disk" agreement and destroy them.
You can always boot your system from a stick and mount your root-fs from storage. That is a standard procedure for many virtualization-setups and DMZ-proxy/fastcgi.
mit freundlichen Grüßen Christian Freund ------------------------------------------- Christian Freund - freund@wrz.de
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] Im Auftrag von Fernando Cassia Gesendet: Freitag, 11. April 2014 04:10 An: CentOS mailing list Betreff: [CentOS] Old HP Xeon server blade with only SCSI HDD ports & CentOS
Hi there.
I got myself a pair of old Intel Xeon blades, which I plan to repurpose with CentOS. The model is : HP bl20p-g3 server blade
Manual http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12322_ca/12322_ca.pdf
Now, the main problem with this hardware is that LVD UW SCSI HDDs are hard to find and hella expensive if you find em (and of reduced capacity). Any of you know:
1. If there's any third party maker of any daughtercard offering SATA ports? The main board of the system has daughtercard sockets allowing for instance SFP ports http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_form-factor_pluggable_transceiver Seems to me that there'd be a small but interesting niche for this kind of adapter.
2. If it's possible to use BootP for booting off a network drive? I know there are some UWSCSI to SATA adapter daughtercards but those sell for $250 which is way over my budget.
So, if you had one of these blades but not any UWSCSI HDDs what would you do?
Thanks in advance for any pointer. This hardware is too good to back to the dumpster where I got mines from... FC -- During times of Universal Deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act Durante épocas de Engaño Universal, decir la verdad se convierte en un Acto Revolucionario - George Orwell _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 04/10/2014 10:10 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
Hi there.
I got myself a pair of old Intel Xeon blades, which I plan to repurpose with CentOS. The model is : HP bl20p-g3 server blade
Manual http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12322_ca/12322_ca.pdf
Now, the main problem with this hardware is that LVD UW SCSI HDDs are hard to find and hella expensive if you find em (and of reduced capacity). ...
Fernando,
That sounds like a cool project. As has been mentioned by several in the thread it's going to be a bit of a challenge to get it running. If the beast has 8 slots, and could draw a total max of 64A (yes, I rounded up, for a reason!) or so at -48V nominal, then each blade is going to draw roughly 8A at -48V (let's round that to -50 for easy calculations) or a max of about 400W per blade. So a 400W telco power supply is going to at most run one blade at max draw, and it could possibly run two blades with small drives.
Having said that, Ultra320 drives aren't too hard to find, but since you're in .AR you might be looking at international shipping. Now, it depends on the exact model of Xeon as to whether 64 bit will work or not, and even if it does you're more likely to find that 32-bit runs better, and CentOS 5 runs better than 6. One of my main dev/test server boxes is running RHEL 6 32-bit on dual 2.8GHz Xeons of the previous generation, and it makes a fine testbed/try-this-out server. And, yes, I do know virtualization of things is the 'Way to Go These Days (TM)'. Well, unless you need a parallel port for an offbeat device controller for an astronomical instrument (IEEE-1284 CAMAC Crate, anyone? What about a SCSI CAMAC Crate (we have three)). Or you're doing other things where virtualization is simply not the right thing to do.
Now, if you're in the 'experimenting' mood you might look at what it would take to adapt something like http://shop.codesrc.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=59&prod... (a 50-pin narrow SCSI to SD flash card board) to LVD UW.
While this box doesn't qualify as 'vintage' yet, if you want to see the lengths to which some people will go you need to go lurk a while on the vintage-computer.com forums; there are people trying to do things as 'interesting' as rebuilding an original PDP/8 (a 'straight 8') from scratch with just a collection of flip-chips, a blank wirewrap backplane, a vintage enclosure, and a set of schematics (and more time on their hands that I have!). So what you're wanting to do, if you have the time and it's more for hobby purposes (or development purposes, even), is nowhere near as far-fetched as some of the things I've been reading lately. (Long story, and way OT).
Now, if I may rant just a bit.
Not everyone on this list is here for professional reasons. I am; but many are not. Many people run CentOS because it's just plain fun to run it on various and sundry 'cast-off' hardware. Fernando has been around for a while; he's not a newbie. He has a new (to him) toy, and wants to make it work. Telling him 'that's too old to be useful' is useless.
In my position with this not-for-profit astronomical observatory, I get this type of answer way too many times: 'You have a VAXstation 4000/90 and you need $off_the_wall_software? Why do you want that old thing? You need $insert_computer_flavor_of_the_day and our new $super_duper_alley_ooper_ka-ching_product! Forget that old stuff!' Yes, we really do have a runnable VS4000/90 (two of them, in fact), and yes it did something important (which is why the software was needed), and no it can't be replaced by something newer without multiple-tens-of-kilobucks worth of new controls hardware and more than that in software development, so can I just get my question answered, please? (Thankfully, we are building something newer thanks to crowdfunding, but it's not yet operational). (And just in case you think you might have that part, no, you don't, unless you had access to internal development information at a particular CAMAC Crate vendor who never supported SCSI CAMAC on VMS later than 5.2, and we needed to at least try to upgrade to OpenVMS 7.3 on VAX or maybe even OpenVMS 8 on Alpha (too much critical (and time-tested, certified) Fortran code to go to anything other than VMS)).
Sorry for the rant.
On 04/12/2014 10:46 AM, Lamar Owen wrote:
Now, if I may rant just a bit.
... Sorry for the rant.
And even more sorry that I didn't make it clear that the rant was directed at no-one in particular, but just out there on the list, and definitely not directed at Fernando.
On 04/12/14 10:57, Lamar Owen wrote:
On 04/12/2014 10:46 AM, Lamar Owen wrote:
Now, if I may rant just a bit.
... Sorry for the rant.
And even more sorry that I didn't make it clear that the rant was directed at no-one in particular, but just out there on the list, and definitely not directed at Fernando.
I'm not bothered - I agree. If what you have meets your needs, why upgrade? And a *lot* of folks, not just at home, do not have a budget for NewK3wlStuph!!! (Which is how I feel about fedora....)
We've got servers that are 5+ years old, including a once-supercomputer from SGI that's from, I think, '03. And if *anyone* thinks we need to get rid of it, they can contact me offlist, to arrange, from their pocket, a donation to the civilian sector of the US federal gov't.....
mark
On 04/14/2014 08:02 AM, mark wrote:
We've got servers that are 5+ years old, including a once-supercomputer from SGI that's from, I think, '03. And if *anyone* thinks we need to get rid of it, they can contact me offlist, to arrange, from their pocket, a donation to the civilian sector of the US federal gov't.....
Heh, SGI Altix..... Got two, formerly used for weather modelling. I have successfully rebuilt up to CentOS 5.9 (I haven't been able to justify the work yet to get to 5.10, but over the summer perhaps) on our 30-CPU SGI Altix 350 system, and it's running on a small 4 CPU Altix 3700 (we have another 3700 with 20 CPU's, but it has a hardware issue somewhere). RH support IA-64 in RHEL 5, so if you have an RH contract you can run straight RHEL5 on it.
My newest servers are by most standards fairly old these days; a pair of Dell PE 6950's and a scattering of PE 1950's. But they're solid, and they do the job.
Lamar Owen wrote:
On 04/14/2014 08:02 AM, mark wrote:
We've got servers that are 5+ years old, including a once-supercomputer from SGI that's from, I think, '03. And if *anyone* thinks we need to get rid of it, they can contact me offlist, to arrange, from their pocket, a donation to the civilian sector of the US federal gov't.....
Heh, SGI Altix..... Got two, formerly used for weather modelling. I have successfully rebuilt up to CentOS 5.9 (I haven't been able to
*ping*
SGI Altix 3000 here. There was some reason - support, I believe, from SGI, that it's running SuSE 10. And the main users have collaborators around the world, some of whom are on *older* systems due to budget or export regs. But it's still test run occasionally to model protein folding.... (But I didn't say where I work, since I don't speak for the Institutes, the agency, nor my employer (a federal contractor)....
justify the work yet to get to 5.10, but over the summer perhaps) on our 30-CPU SGI Altix 350 system, and it's running on a small 4 CPU Altix 3700 (we have another 3700 with 20 CPU's, but it has a hardware issue somewhere). RH support IA-64 in RHEL 5, so if you have an RH contract you can run straight RHEL5 on it.
My newest servers are by most standards fairly old these days; a pair of Dell PE 6950's and a scattering of PE 1950's. But they're solid, and they do the job.
Oh. START THE PROCESS to budget for replacements of the PE 1950's. Start it last week. We replaced all ours a couple of years ago - inside of a month, we had something like 4? 6? of them have the RAID daughterboard croak (talk about quality control!), and they're years out of support, anyway. R410 or R610's'll do you.
mark
On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 10:28 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Oh. START THE PROCESS to budget for replacements of the PE 1950's. Start it last week. We replaced all ours a couple of years ago - inside of a month, we had something like 4? 6? of them have the RAID daughterboard croak (talk about quality control!), and they're years out of support, anyway. R410 or R610's'll do you.
So has anyone done a cost analysis on the point where it is an overall win to replace those old power hogs even if they still work if you consider several years of savings on power/AC/space/time and maybe the possibility of replacing at least 4 old clunkers with VMs on a single new box? Or does no one look at the big picture - like the IRS ending up paying Microsoft for 'custom' support of XP that they've known for years had to go?
Hi Les,
we did that this winter in another floor and replaced a complete server-room, containing several Racks full of 1850/1950/2850/2950/R310, except the least all with 2 or more local SCSI-disks and dual power-supply.
All that now runs in a virtualized environment on 2+1 R720; we now have 3 R720 replacing 4 racks in another room. This means no air-conditioning, UPS, switches there. Allover it is an average of 31KW lower power-consumption.
Now calculating the hardware cost: 60K EUR for servers, storage-upgrade and licenses, and saving 262MWh or 52K EUR per year. So after 14 month of operation the energy-saving pays the hardware. Not speaking of the allover TCO including lower staff-costs and maintenance for the bigger amount of hardware now off.
mit freundlichen Grüßen Christian Freund ------------------------------------------- Christian Freund - freund@wrz.de
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] Im Auftrag von Les Mikesell Gesendet: Montag, 14. April 2014 17:59 An: CentOS mailing list Betreff: Re: [CentOS] Old HP Xeon server blade with only SCSI HDD ports & CentOS
On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 10:28 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Oh. START THE PROCESS to budget for replacements of the PE 1950's. Start it last week. We replaced all ours a couple of years ago - inside of a month, we had something like 4? 6? of them have the RAID daughterboard croak (talk about quality control!), and they're years out of support, anyway. R410 or R610's'll do you.
So has anyone done a cost analysis on the point where it is an overall win to replace those old power hogs even if they still work if you consider several years of savings on power/AC/space/time and maybe the possibility of replacing at least 4 old clunkers with VMs on a single new box? Or does no one look at the big picture - like the IRS ending up paying Microsoft for 'custom' support of XP that they've known for years had to go?
-- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On 04/15/2014 05:17 AM, Christian Freund wrote:
Now calculating the hardware cost: 60K EUR for servers, storage-upgrade and licenses, and saving 262MWh or 52K EUR per year. So after 14 month of operation the energy-saving pays the hardware.
In your case it was a big win. For us, not so much.
On 04/14/2014 11:58 AM, Les Mikesell wrote:
So has anyone done a cost analysis on the point where it is an overall win to replace those old power hogs even if they still work if you consider several years of savings on power/AC/space/time and maybe the possibility of replacing at least 4 old clunkers with VMs on a single new box?
Yes, I have.
A 1950 fully loaded with 2x SAS drives will pull about 350W or so, max. After applying a max 1.4 PUE (our PUE, of course, varies with the season) that gives about $275 per year per box. Since the 1950's were donated to us as NOS, and they are quite capable machines for basically any workload we have other than what the Altix boxen would do (say what you want; 30 1.5GHz IA-64's with optimized code and 54GB of RAM will crunch numbers quite well, and costs only 30 cents per hour to run (we don't run it 24x7, but only as needed and in the winter, when it helps heat things)), it isn't cost-effective for us to replace them at the moment. The EMC Clariions that they're connected to take far more power than that, running around 3KVA per rack ($2,500 or so per year per rack). But that cost would be there with a beefier virtualization box, too. In our particular case, the power cost for storage swamps out the power costs for the servers.
I'm looking at putting oVirt on a few of the 1950's and pulling things from VMware on the 6950's over to them, and retire the 6950's, which have run continuously for the last 7 years.
We're a 501(c)(3) and I'd be glad to take your donation of something better, of course. :-)
On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 11:46 AM, Lamar Owen lowen@pari.edu wrote:
Now, if you're in the 'experimenting' mood you might look at what it would take to adapt something like
http://shop.codesrc.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=59&prod... (a 50-pin narrow SCSI to SD flash card board) to LVD UW.
Thanks for the pointer Lamar.
While this box doesn't qualify as 'vintage' yet, if you want to see the lengths to which some people will go you need to go lurk a while on the vintage-computer.com forums; there are people trying to do things as 'interesting' as rebuilding an original PDP/8 (a 'straight 8') from scratch with just a collection of flip-chips, a blank wirewrap backplane, a vintage enclosure, and a set of schematics (and more time on their hands that I have!).
That is waaaaay too much for me. Yet, if I run across a Commodore 64 in a dumpster, I'll surely open its guts and take its SI6581 sound chip for what I wanted all my childhood and couldn't have: a "Stereo SID" cartridge. ;)
Of the 8bit years I've got a working C128D, and of the 16-bit age an Amiga 1200 (it works, but it's not hooked up, lost the scandoubler and hence it's impossible to display its low-refresh modes in today's VGA monitors). I've also got a working 4-way SMP monster, the ALR Quad6 (4x Intel Pentium Pro 200Mhz) w 256MB RAM. But that thing is really a toaster.
So what you're wanting to do, if you have
the time and it's more for hobby purposes (or development purposes, even), is nowhere near as far-fetched as some of the things I've been reading lately. (Long story, and way OT).
Basically I never had anything to do with blades, and since I have never worked for big corporations (nor I plan to, unless one of my favorite tech firms decide to hire me, and there's only 2 in that category ;), this was/is the only opportunity of being up close with Blade technology.
It was fun already learning how it all works, and the hardware design. For instance I thought before that the blades could operate by themselves even with ethernet ports but that's not entirely true, without the interconnect backplane and the comms blade (which I also found I have) that provides the Ethernet ports, it's crippled.
Back to topic.
It seems the only stumbling block for me so far is 1. Finding a 48V power supply 2. Learning the right polarity on the connectors in the back of the chassis so I don't burn things down 3. Dealing with the UWSCSI issue, either by finding a cheap used UWSCSI drive or buying an adapter (last night while searching about this, I stumbled upon one Florida,USA store selling one UWSCSI to SATA adapter for like $75, instead of the usual $150-$170 that is the minimum price you can find on eBay or amazon).
In the end, if this exercise ends up getting nowhere. I'm gonna put the blades for sale at a local auctions site, but first taking out the 8GB of DDR2 ECC RAM which I can use in my Sun AMD Opteron box...
Thanks for the help -you and everyone who replied-, have a nice weekend!.
FC
(If this double posts, my apologies. The first one was sent from the wrong address and I'm not sure it went through)
On Apr 12, 2014, at 8:46 AM, Fernando Cassia fcassia@gmail.com wrote:
It seems the only stumbling block for me so far is
- Finding a 48V power supply
How much current do you need? I bet I could find you one (if it's not a ridiculous amount). There's a surplus place here in the Portland area that has all manner of marginally useful power supplies.
--Russell
On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 8:30 PM, Russell Miller duskglow@gmail.com wrote:
How much current do you need? I bet I could find you one (if it's not a ridiculous amount). There's a surplus place here in the Portland area that has all manner of marginally useful power supplies.
I'm a bit far from Portland I'm afraid. http://www.mapcrow.info/cgi-bin/cities_distance_airpt2.cgi?city3=-1456711%2C...
Not that I wouldn't want to be closer. ;)
FC
On Apr 12, 2014, at 6:15 PM, Fernando Cassia fcassia@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 8:30 PM, Russell Miller duskglow@gmail.com wrote:
How much current do you need? I bet I could find you one (if it's not a ridiculous amount). There's a surplus place here in the Portland area that has all manner of marginally useful power supplies.
I'm a bit far from Portland I'm afraid. http://www.mapcrow.info/cgi-bin/cities_distance_airpt2.cgi?city3=-1456711%2C...
Not that I wouldn't want to be closer. ;)
Yes, just a bit.
If you were in the US I could hunt it down for you, but I must say, in my best "minister from Blazing Saddles" voice:
Son, you're on your own.
Unless you're willing to pay for shipping. :)
--Russell
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Russell Miller