Kyle McDonald writes: > > There's already a good hostid mechanism on SPARC. The problem is that > > there's no equivalent mechanism on x86. > > > > > I don't know how it would work on AMD systems, and I'm not sure a > difference between AMD and intel is desirable, but, I would think that > Solaris could enable the Intel CPU serial number feature, read and save > the SN, and then disable the feature. Wouldn't this give a basically > equivalent HW hostid mechanism that SPARC has?
Most BIOSes have a way to turn that off and due to FUD surrounding the feature, I suspect pretty much all the customers do. It gets worse. Suppose you have multiple CPUs, what do you do? Should the ID change if you need to swap out a failed CPU? The problem is that the CPU itself doesn't really identify the "chassis" or "host." -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
