[CentOS] CentOS on Dell Poweredge 2850

Wed Sep 17 08:30:45 UTC 2008
Michel van Deventer <michel at van.deventer.cx>

Hi,

On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 10:26 +0200, Sorin at Gmail wrote:
> Ian Forde <> scribbled on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 8:35 PM:
> 
> >> Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running
> >> dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
> >> 
> >> *My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear with
> >> you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
> >> 
> >> My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognise the raid-controller
> >> of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
> >> 
> >> Any feedback on this is appreciated.
> > 
> > I don't forsee any problems.  I'm running CentOS 5.2 on a 2950 III and
> > omreport installs fine without any problems.  I can see the RAID array
> > and monitor via the Nagios omreport plugins (search nagios-exchange for
> > them).  Onboard NICs shouldn't be a problem either...
> 
> Thx. A former unix-admin at the dept thinks it might be a little on the old
> side hardware-wise, this particular server is about four years old. I'm
> split...
> 
> This particular Poweredge modell is certified for RHEL 2 and 3. If I'd try to
> install RHEL5 on it, would bad things happen, or is it just a support issue?
> Seeing how CentOS 5.2 is equivalent to RHEL5, I don't see *what* could happen
> though... Kernel panics??
I'm running RHEL5 and CentOS 5 on many PE 2850's. As long as you use the
Dell PERC4 or PERC5 controllers all will work well. Onboard NICs work
fine too.

	Regards,

	Michel