[Centos] installing CentOS on the IBM BladeCenter

Thu Nov 25 00:52:45 UTC 2004
Ted Kaczmarek <tedkaz at optonline.net>

The IBM Bladecenter is one of the worst abominations I have ever come
across. I can see it being a web commerce site in a box, but other that
that the thing is a boat anchor. Their Dlink switches are absolute
garbage, after 9 upgrades I only have to reboot them once a month now.
We tried the OEM Cisco switch, they gave me bad hardware, since their
support people didn't know a frame from a packet they were unable to
resolve it. Finally we sent the Cisco's back. Our rep finally tells us
they are coming out with ethernet pass through, which we purchased. I
pray that these work. The management station hangs about once every 2
months as well. Then only thing I have ever come across that compares to
this POS is Sun's E10k, the memory latency rendered it useless as well.

I am also perplexed how many people got sucked in on these, they where
ripped to shreds on slash dot, the over subscription with 4 ports is
more than 3 to 1, and qos is only of any use up to 4 queues with the
Notrel hardware.

Also their ROI numbers are a joke, ( I am not even considering the 150
or so man hours to get it to work at all, at 125$ a pop that pays for 4
loaded 345's) once you add the whole enchillada up, it is much cheaper
to use 345's even with 14 blades in a chassis. 

I also have a hard time putting anything critical on a box that uses
Toshiba laptop hard drives and doesn't have serial console. 

I guess if one doesn't need serial consoles, and real local disk IO and
network IO is may be a good solution, but to me its a boat anchor.

Sorry for ranting, but I needed this, just got off a bloody battle with
a moron vendor who had no clue what a don't fragment flag is. They
rolled out a whole bunch of Solaris patches that appear to hard code the
DF flag to set.

Ted


On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 15:37 -0500, Phillip_James at gardencitygroup.com
wrote:
> thanks
> 
> 
> Phillip James
> System Administrator
> The Garden City Group, Inc.
> 105 Maxess Road
> Melville, NY 11747-3836
> Phone: (631) 470-5044
> Fax: (631) 940-6561
> E-mail: Phillip.James at GardenCityGroup.com
> ====================================================
> This communication (including any attachments) is intended for the use of
> the intended recipient(s) only and may contain information that is
> confidential, privileged or legally protected.  Any unauthorized use or
> dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited.  If you have
> received this communication in error, please immediately notify the sender
> by return e-mail message and delete all copies of the original
> communication.  Thank you for your cooperation.
> 
> 
> 
> |---------+---------------------------->
> |         |           Matt Shields     |
> |         |           <mattboston at gmail|
> |         |           .com>            |
> |         |                            |
> |         |           11/24/2004 03:36 |
> |         |           PM               |
> |         |           Please respond to|
> |         |           Matt Shields     |
> |---------+---------------------------->
>   >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
>   |                                                                                                                                                  |
>   |       To:       "phillip_james at gardencitygroup.com" <phillip_james at gardencitygroup.com>                                                          |
>   |       cc:       centos at caosity.org                                                                                                               |
>   |       Subject:  Re: [Centos] installing CentOS on the IBM BladeCenter                                                                            |
>   >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Strange, w/ RHEL3ES it didn't require any driver disks.  I just used
> the 4 ISO's.  I'll have to see if I have a spare blade that I could
> try CentOS on, but I believe the rest are all being used by our
> Windows admins.
> 
> 
> --
> Matt Shields
> http://masnetworks.biz/
> http://www.caosity.org/
> 
> On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:28:32 -0500, phillip_james at gardencitygroup.com
> <phillip_james at gardencitygroup.com> wrote:
> >
> > I got RHEL 3ES installed but the do not what to buy entittlements for all
> > my servers. So I tryed to install CentOS but it did not work.
> >
> > I did a "linux dd" were dd = RHEL3ES dd disk for the BladeCenter but it
> did
> > not work.
> >
> >
> >
> > Phillip James
> > System Administrator
> > The Garden City Group, Inc.
> > 105 Maxess Road
> > Melville, NY 11747-3836
> > Phone: (631) 470-5044
> > Fax: (631) 940-6561
> > E-mail: Phillip.James at GardenCityGroup.com
> > ====================================================
> > This communication (including any attachments) is intended for the use of
> > the intended recipient(s) only and may contain information that is
> > confidential, privileged or legally protected.  Any unauthorized use or
> > dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited.  If you have
> > received this communication in error, please immediately notify the
> sender
> > by return e-mail message and delete all copies of the original
> > communication.  Thank you for your cooperation.
> >
> >
> > |---------+---------------------------->
> > |         |           Matt Shields     |
> > |         |           <mattboston at gmail|
> > |         |           .com>            |
> > |         |                            |
> > |         |           11/24/2004 02:50 |
> > |         |           PM               |
> > |         |           Please respond to|
> > |         |           Matt Shields     |
> > |---------+---------------------------->
> >   >
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
> 
> >   |
> |
> >   |       To:       "phillip_james at gardencitygroup.com"
> <phillip_james at gardencitygroup.com>
> |
> >   |       cc:       centos at caosity.org
> |
> >   |       Subject:  Re: [Centos] installing CentOS on the IBM BladeCenter
> |
> >   >
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
> 
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > A couple months ago I installed RHEL3ES on 3 blades on each of 2
> > eSeries Blade Centers.  You can even use the Blade Center's web
> > interface to remotely view the screen.  If you have the media in the
> > system you can install it remotely.
> >
> > --
> > Matt Shields
> > http://masnetworks.biz/
> > http://www.caosity.org/
> >
> > On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 14:40:08 -0500, phillip_james at gardencitygroup.com
> > <phillip_james at gardencitygroup.com> wrote:
> > > Has any one install CentOS 3.3 or early on a IBM BladeCenter eServers
> > > (HS20)
> > >
> > > Phillip James
> > > System Administrator
> > > The Garden City Group, Inc.
> > > 105 Maxess Road
> > > Melville, NY 11747-3836
> > > Phone: (631) 470-5044
> > > Fax: (631) 940-6561
> > > E-mail: Phillip.James at GardenCityGroup.com
> > > ====================================================
> > > This communication (including any attachments) is intended for the use
> of
> > > the intended recipient(s) only and may contain information that is
> > > confidential, privileged or legally protected.  Any unauthorized use or
> > > dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited.  If you
> have
> > > received this communication in error, please immediately notify the
> > sender
> > > by return e-mail message and delete all copies of the original
> > > communication.  Thank you for your cooperation.
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > CentOS mailing list
> > > CentOS at caosity.org
> > > http://lists.caosity.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
> > >
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
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