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

Fri Apr 11 14:14:56 UTC 2014
Christian Freund <freund at wrz.de>

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 at wrz.de

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at 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 at 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
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