blade servers (was Re: [Bioclusters] Any experiences with these guys? reeks)

[Tim Cutts]

On 03-Nov-03, Jeff Layton wrote:
> Could you define what you mean by provisioning?

Equipping the machine with some sort of standard system software image,
or other software/data.

> Also, could you describe what you look for in management
> and monitoring?

I'm not going to make specific comments about any particular blade
vendor on this list, but many of you will know that we have significant
blade installations from two of the major blade players, totalling over
a thousand installed CPUs.

I'd say my ideal requirements are:

1)  Remote serial console, and a BIOS that's reachable by serial
    console.  Vital, and AFAIK *none* of the current 2P blade products
    have it.  Without it, we have no console logging.  Bad.
    
2)  The ability to power cycle and provision machines remotely, with
    command line tools.

3)  There should be *no* functionality that is only accessible solely
    through a Java or web GUI or KVM switch, because that removes my
    ability (a) to script the management or (b) makes things infeasible
    over slow or long distance links.

4)  I'd like a provisioning mechanism that is agnostic about the Linux
    distribution or other OS in use.

5)  I don't want web-based administration that depends on specific Java
    versions or such like - that's a needless headache restricting the
    environments from which the machines can be administered, and I
    especially don't want administrative tools that run only on a
    proprietary OS.

Both our current installations satisfy three or more of these
requirements, to a greater or lesser extent.

Tim

-- 
Dr Tim Cutts
Informatics Systems Group
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SA, UK