[CentOS] Install Centos 6 x86_64 on Dell PowerEdge 2970 and aSSD (hardware probing issues)

[Keith Keller]

On 2014-09-06, Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> I get rackmount
> ones assembled by small company (companies) and about 1/2 of cost of
> similar hardware from Dell. Those are for the most part based on Tyan
> barebones. And during last at least decade I never had a "must to" flash
> newer BIOS situation with any of those boxes.

You have been lucky, then.  I agree that flashing the firmware should be
a rare event, but expecting the rate to be exactly 0 is an unreasonable
expectation.

I have had to flash a BIOS once, and a BMC once, in about 10 years of
buying server hardware.  (Yes, flashing a BMC probably wouldn't brick a
box, but it'd brick getting a remote console, which for me is almost as
serious.)  I consider that an acceptable bug rate.

Flashing a RAID controller is actually more frightening to me--flashing
the BIOS isn't likely to hose your data, but an undetected bad flash on
a RAID controller could.  Sadly my flash rate of my controllers is
slightly higher than my BIOS flash rate.

--keith



-- 
kkeller at wombat.san-francisco.ca.us