[CentOS] Old HP Xeon server blade with only SCSI HDD ports & CentOS

[Lamar Owen]

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&product_id=50 
(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.