On 5/14/07, Alex Howells <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Thinking about other options, does anyone have any other tip for me? Am I > going in the right direction? For the obvious answer: I know it's better to > be closer to the datacenter, but that's not an option for me right now and I > know I'll have a remote-hands service, but it can be very time inefficient > sometimes and I'm trying to avoid it as much as possible. Tips: * Install decent PDUs in your racks, I'd highly recommend APC Masterswitch; you're going to want to power cycle various bits of hardware, and SNMP is an easy way to do it. * Some cheap kit (Cisco 2506s) from a distributor or eBay with 4 x 8-port console cards (32 total) can give you inexpensive access to the serial line of your nodes, buy a slightly more expensive one for if you wanna deploy 8 x 8-port or 12 x 8-port.
I'll look in to it... * Have some kind of rescue environment available over network boot,
it's invaluable for diagnosing H/W problems; you'll probably also want memtest86+ or equivalent too. * Invest in some IP cameras for the suite within the datacenter. Technicians are often rubbish and don't describe things clearly, it's a very good idea to be able to say, "Show me!" and also for security purposes!
Good ideia! * Write a small database which knows where every node is located
(physical location) and what it's connected to (switch port, PDU port, console server port); then a bit of software to wrap around that and you'll have a good level of control over all nodes.
I'll be doing this using a software called IRM (http://irm.stackworks.net/). It seems to have a good server inventory system. All of the above avoids complications with KVM-over-IP type devices,
most of which come with evil Java applets :( If you go down the Cisco route, you'll be able to telnet to the 'console server' and access any of its serial lines, make sure to define ACLs. Cheers, Alex -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Thanks man! Best regards, Daniel
