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

Peter Arremann loony at loonybin.org
Tue Aug 2 13:06:40 UTC 2005


On Tuesday 02 August 2005 00:09, Jim Wildman wrote:
> Sure.  The issues I am aware of are around the management processor
> implementation.  The server has an embedded PPC based processor that has
> the ability to access either the serial port, or the console directly.
> However, it does neither automatically, out of the box or without some
> work on the OS side.  There are no SNMP MIB's available (that I know
> of) for accessing the information it may have access to.  It is
> particularly difficult to get Solaris to function with the serial port
> as 'console'.
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)... 
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. 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... 

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



> This is in contrast to HP's RIB/iLO family of cards, which work out of
> the box for either direct or web based console access, and with minimal
> OS configuration can access the serial port.  They come with a complete
> set of MIBs and easily installed OS modules.  The latest versions
> support ssh as well as web, and both text and graphical access allow
> you to mount remote 'virtual' media for installation, etc.
Yes - that's the keyword... virtual media... That's the one functionality the 
v40z doesn't support that HP has... Galaxy gladly fixed that issue. 

> Part of the issue may be that Sun did not/could not buy the complete
> package from Newisys.  If you look at the Newisys web page, it looks
> like they have functionality that may come close to HP's, but it is
> locked up on the Sun boxes.  The web server is running, but all roads
> (that I could find) lead no where.  
Yep :-( If you have a NSV, update to the latest firmware... fixes quite a bit 
but still doesn't give you all the functionality HP has... And it gets rid of 
the SP errors that cause the "press any key to continue" :-D

> Additionally, the v40z is an orphan. 
> Sun has announced plans to replace them (and their little brothers,
> v20z) with 'Galaxy' class boxes of their own design.
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. 

> All of that said, once they are installed, they seem to be rock solid.
> If you are expecting a very Solaris looking platform for Linux, the v40z
> fills the bill.  If you are expecting a Wintel type platform (ala HP),
> it doesn't even get in the game.
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. The 
board, the layout of the box (hardware) and all is great... The SP is a huge 
pain... I get this complaint all the time and sun also knows about it (hence 
the move to galaxy). The huge difference there will be that the SP is 
completely redesigned. From what I can tell, they basicly reimplemented what 
Compaq had feature by feature...

Peter.




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