[Bioclusters] xraid

[Chris Dwan (CCGB)]

> May I know what chipset is the Apple's dual FC card using? And what driver 
> you are using for this card?

That's the part where we made an educated guess and got lucky.  With the
price difference between a "certified" Sun FC card and Apple's FC card, we
could have bought an XSERVE to go with the XRAIDs and still been cheaper
than just the Sun-certified card.  

The drivers we're using appear to have been part of the Solaris patch sets
we already had installed.  I don't know about the chipset.

> And how do you manage the XRAID in this case since Apple only provide
> the management software for OS X.

The interface units on the XRAIDs each have an RJ-45 plug, which
(out of the box) attempts to get an IP address via DHCP.  Once the
interfaces are configured to play nicely on your network, you manage the
systems over the network.  At that point you have two options:

1) Use an internet connected Apple, somewhere in the world, to manage 
   the devices

2) Download the java source for the management tool (somewhere under 
   http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid, I think) and manage it from 
   some other platform.  We've successfully made contact with the XRAIDs 
   from both PCs running Windows and Suns running Solaris.

-Chris Dwan
 CCGB, University of Minnesota