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I was doing some research for a client regarding ESX support on servers and it got me thinking of a chat I was having with a client. As ever what works and what is officially supported by the vendors sometimes differs. My client had asked if he could install VMware ESX 4.0 on his DL385 G1 to test functionality before upgrading his other servers, after some digging I found this post, do check it out.

When we say supported, that means if we log a call and ask for support the vendor will examine the issue without discussion and that the hardware has been validated as compatible and suitable for that operating system. The example being that you can install Windows 2003 on a Compaq Proliant DL380 G1, technically it may work but Microsoft and (or) HP may not recognize it as a supported configuration. Back to my client, could he install VMware ESX 4.0 on his DL385 G1 to check before upgrading, yes and it would work, however this is not a supported configuration therefore do it, sign off that you are happy with the configurations, the standards and the setup procedures but recognize that it might not properly replicate your production or real world platform going forward.

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I got asked about upgrading the iDRAC firmware on a Dell R610 by email:

Hi Martin,

Does upgrading the iDRAC firmware need a reboot and do I upgrade it in Windows or do I need to log on to the iDRAC itself?

Thanks
Mike

I’ve summarized the reply email I sent to Mike. You can either run the online iDRAC or DRAC (for the older Dell servers) firmware upgrade or you can extract the firmware file, the 1.5 img for example and then log into the iDRAC itself, click remote access, firmware and then update selecting the image file that you have downloaded from the Dell site. In terms of things to watch, it does not require a reboot, but upgrading the firmware will cause the iDRAC itself to restart which will cause anyone connected to become disconnected, it will also stop pinging (like the ILO) when the firmware has been applied and it’s resetting to load the new firmware.

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http://www.cio.co.uk/article/3267035/cio-profile-greenwich-unis-alan-broadaway-on-campus-infrastructure/?intcmp=HPF3

Much of what Alan Broadaway had to do when he arrived as head of ICT for the University of Greenwich was around streamlining the college’s systems. It was a process of ticking off the most obvious challenges first.

When he came in (in 2006), his first project was to rationalise the server portfolio with virtualisation. The college invested £2m in switching from a lot of small separate units to blade servers and a storage area network.

The research branches of the university rely heavily on bandwidth-hungry applications, like computer modelling and the existing infrastructure was causing them to vie with each other for scarce resources.

An interesting article illustrating how this Head of ICT for the University of Greenwich streamlined the college systems. Increasingly it’s not just looking at the operational costs, outsourcing elements of the IT parts that are not core or can be better provided by a partner or supplier. It’s establishing what services are core to your business, seeing what parts of the IT are acting as a hindrance and an empowerment tool, what we need to do to not only transform the cost structure through smart provisioning, but also investing in the right range of technologies and services, this may involve buying in email, buying backups and restore as a service for example at one end of the scale, at the other end refreshing hardware, consolidating services and applications, reducing the range and number of physical servers to provide room for growth in capacity and headroom with which to make real change and opportunities to meet and exceed the business needs, whether the business or end users realize them now or not. Do check out the article, and consider with your existing barriers to entry both in cost and operations what you might achieve as an end user, as a business unit and an organization

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http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/platform-computing-announces-support-for-mapreduce-118834534.html

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Platform Computing, the leader in cluster, grid and cloud management software, today announced the company is now bringing enterprise-class distributed computing to business analytics applications that process “big” data using the Apache Hadoop MapReduce programming model. Based on more than 18 years of industry leadership in workload management for high performance computing (HPC) applications, Platform Computing’s analytics solutions are a natural expansion of the company’s distributed computing experience built on the company’s core technologies, Platform LSF and Platform Symphony.

It’s always great to see and hear about innovation of grid computing and it’s movement into the cloud, which by its very nature can make grid computing more accessible to different user groups, simply buying in the capacity you need, or even selling the capacity you have spare can create real opportunities for new services and options for revenue generation. I’m off to read up more.

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I got an email from George asking about upgrading the disks in one of their file servers a DL380 G2:

Can I plug in 300GB Ultra SCSI 320 drives into a DL380 G2 and will I be able to create a large drive using the on board controller?
Thanks
George

The drives will work fine, we had up until recently a client running a DL380 G2 with three 300GB drives to provide a 800GB volume for there documents and it worked without issue. Do ensure the drivers and firmware are up to date and that you have a valid backup before making any changes.

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http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/news-rel-20110330-709682.html

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—March 30, 2011—NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) announced today that it is one of the first storage vendors to support director-class multihop Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) with Cisco data center switches, allowing customers to create larger data center network fabrics and drive measurable value with speed and efficiency by connecting multiple cost-effective FCoE switches. With director-class multihop, customers now have the IT flexibility to deploy FCoE in the core of large data centers, giving them the ability to reduce cost and improve efficiency on even greater scales.

Cisco solutions are also part of the new NetApp® Ethernet Advantage Program, which vastly expands NetApp’s ecosystem of technology partners and portfolio of tested, validated, and supported solutions for FCoE configurations. With NetApp Ethernet Advantage, customers can quickly find and deploy the right solution for their specific data center and business needs, knowing it is fully supported and delivered by NetApp’s robust network of innovative technology partners. Together, support for FCoE multihop and the NetApp Ethernet Advantage Program give NetApp customers even greater choice and flexibility when migrating to FCoE infrastructures by allowing them to leverage their relationships with trusted vendors through NetApp’s extensive ecosystem of technology partners.

Anything NetApp and Cisco can do to further the opportunities in the Fibre Channel Over Ethernet is great news, the more we develop solutions the more we can standardize and create opportunities both technically and financially which has to be good news for the vendor and end user community alike. I’m off to read up more here.

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Check out our videos of our new HP MicroServer, we bought it yesterday and it got delivered today so we’re all excited here at the Bladewatch residence, I’ve got videos of the box being opened and it’s contents as we ordered the MicroServer bundle including the server itself, a DVD Writer drive, 4GB memory and a USB stick with ESXI on it so we have in essence a VMware server in a MicroServer kit.

The url for the quickspecs can be found here and we ordered the server direct from here.

Our unopened HP MicroServer:

The box being opened:

I’ll put together a brief document explaining how to fit everything in and some set up tips but the install guide was actually quite good, more content to follow. We’re hoping to plug it in and leave it on to see how it performs, on first impressions, it’s quite quiet and fast enough so far so good.

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I got a question from Chris the other day asking me if I had ever used the HP Smart Update Firmware DVD, he had logged a call to HP to fix a BL460 G1 blade which was misbehaving and before they started swapping out components, they wanted the drivers and firmware updated, and that’s when he got asked to run the HP Firmware DVD.

At that point I hadn’t actually used it, the difference between using their Firmware DVD and the online firmware is that the firmware can be done all in one go and include running the firmware for the actual server disks which cannot be done using their online firmware feature. So I experimented on a couple of our servers including a BL460 G1, a DL385 G1 and a DL380 G4 without issue.

So with that in mind I put together a quick guide:

• Download the latest firmware dvd, you can find it here. (It’s 9.20 as I write this post).
• Either burn the dvd to disc and put into the dvd drive or using the Integrated Lights Out (ILO/ILO2/ILO3) mount the iso and reboot the server
• The firmware utility will automatically boot into the iso/dvd and then run a menu system in which you can do a manual firmware update or update everything and press enter
• The utility will then go off and update everything.
• Reboot the server

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http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2035894/hp-updates-mission-critical-bladesystem-servers-quad-core-version

HP has updated the BladeSystem edition of its NonStop mission-critical server platform with a quad-core Itanium server model.

The Integrity NonStop BladeSystem NB54000C sports a quad-core Itanium 9300 processor which will double performance over the previous model, the firm claimed.

An article talking about the HP NonStop BladeSystem seeing double the performance through the introduction of the quad-core Itanium 9300 processor, it’s great to see further innovation of the NonStop platform and the Itanium platform, anything that can be done to improve performance or scalability has to be a good thing. I’m off to check it out.

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http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/fujitsu-wins-major-hpc-wales-project-24505

Fujitsu will re-enter the European market with a £15m lighthouse supercomputing partner project

Wales is set to become a centre of supercomputing excellence following the announcement that Fujitsu has won a major high-performance computing (HPC) deal there earlier today.

The Japanese multinational won a competitive tendering process that involved a number of unnamed, but major HPC players after the project to create an HPC centre of excellence in Wales was announced last July 2010.

An interesting article talking about this project that Fujitsu has won to implement a HPC solution, it’s interesting to see what applications and services are being powered by HPC solutions, whether it’s research or risk analytics, rich media composition etc, the article mentions that the platform is based on Linux and Windows using Infiniband and Intel Xeon processors, composed of 1400 nodes, I wonder if any of these are blade or rack servers, whether they are 1u or maybe their PRIMERGY CX1000 platform.

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