Hugh Brown wrote:
> Hi everyone -- with all the fun that Sun/Oracle is having these days,
> I'm starting to reconsider favourite hardware vendors. ("I only have
> one rose to give away...") I'm looking for advice on ILOMs, and in
> particular console access/Serial-Over-LAN.
>
> Background: I work at a small university department, with our server
> room across the street. Almost everything we run is Linux or some
> BSD. Mama raised me right, so remote consoles are very, very
> important to me.
>
> I've had very good experience with Sun hardware. The ILOMs work out
> of the box, getting a serial console on the machine is very easy (SSH
> in, run "start /SP/console"), and they work nearly flawlessly. The
> few times I've had problems with them, I've been able to reset the
> ILOMs just fine.
>
> By contrast, my experience with Dell ILOMs has been irritating:
>
> * Console redirection depends on having eight different settings just
> right
>
> * The ILOMs sometimes drop off the network and stop responding for no
> apparent reason; I haven't figured out a way to reset the ILOM w/o
> actually pulling out all the power to the server
>
> * Identical servers purchased at the same time have different ILOM
> firmware revisions, causing console redirection to work on only some
> of them
>
> I'm hoping someone can point me to another vendor (HP, IBM...anyone
> else?) for x86 servers with ILOMs that:
>
> * are available by SSH
>
> * are reliable
>
> * allow console redirection either over SSH or by Serial-over-LAN/IPMI
> command-line tools, including BIOS screens.
>
> * plus the usual IPMI stuff (check FRUs, SNMP, power cycle, etc)
>
> Bonus points for being less expensive than Sun and having
> offices/resellers in Canada.
>
> Anyone?
ILOM, ALOM, iLo, DRAC, whatever. The concept is what matters. Sun has
been doing this for a long time and has gotten it down pretty well.
Basically, the ILOM is the software interface. The hardware is the SP or
Service Processor, which lives on a card of its own, separate from the
main system or SYS. On my T5220's, the SP is actually running Linux on a
PowerPC. When you log in to it, you get a shell which is the ILOM
script, and interrupts are locked out so you can't get to a Linux
command prompt. Sun service can come up with passwords that get them to
the Linux, and I think they've rigged some sort of one-time password
system in the latest firmware releases.
The key advantage of Sun's ILOM is that the SP is tightly integrated
with the SYS and has direct connections to sensors and indicators on the
main system. It is the SP that controls the fault lights on the front of
the machine. The SP is always on, so as soon as you plug the machine in
the SP powers up and indicator lights activate. It controls the startup
of the main system, can get diagnostics even when the main system is
locked up, and can force a shutdown, poweroff, or reboot of the main system.
As far as the Oracle/Sun acquisition is concerned, I'm sad to see Sun
go, but I'm very glad that it was Oracle and not IBM. IBM would have
cannibalized Sun. They have their own product lines that directly
compete and that would benefit from the disappearance of Sun and from
the use of key Sun technologies to augment them. Sort of like Intel
eating Alpha. Oracle, on the other hand, fills out their offerings to
compete with IBM by acquiring Sun. As their NPR ads say, "hardware,
software, complete." They have deep pockets, and have said repeatedly
that they will spend more on key Sun technologies than what Sun spent.
Only time will tell, but I'm reasonably confident that I can count on
Sun servers, storage and Solaris to continue.
I just received the latest and last BigAdmin newsletter email from
Oracle/Sun yesterday. It will be replaced by the Oracle Solaris
Community Newsletter. In it, they had a variety of notable items.
Several times they referred to Oracle Solaris. They also are dumping the
name LDOM and rechristening it Oracle VM Server for SPARC. Seems like
they have a slightly better handle on terminology. There was also an
article on building Sybase for optimal performance on the Sun 7000
storage systems. Interesting. So, they'll push Sun's storage even if it
is without Oracle DB. There were also some items about MySQL.
I wouldn't worry too much about Sun's products. Over time, we'll see
where things go.
On the other hand, it is perfectly reasonable to compare products and
prices. Many departments on our campus have shifted to Linux and either
AMD or Intel. The computing cluster in Astronomy was built on SuperMicro
rack mount servers with AMD processors, DRAC cards, and Ubuntu LTS
Server. I don't recall how many systems are in that cluster, but it's a
lot. The admin had some complaints about the DRAC cards, but got them
working satisfactorily and can manage the entire cluster remotely,
starting up, shutting down, either individually or en masse.
We've also just started using SuperMicro with AMD and Ubuntu for some of
our systems. My main department servers are still Sun, however. We'll
see what happens when budgets recover and we come around to another
replacement cycle. But that combination of events is a few years out.
--
---------------
Chris Hoogendyk
-
O__ ---- Systems Administrator
c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
(*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst
<[email protected]>
---------------
Erdös 4
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