Help me select hardware and software options for very large server

Terry Kennedy terry+freebsd-current at tmk.com
Sat Jan 24 18:44:08 PST 2009


> We're using plenty of the closely related S5000PAL m/b with various
> Xeons and we're very happy with them.

  That's good to know.

> > p Remote management - Intel Remote Management Module 2 - AXXRM2
>
> We tried this and decided it's not worth having (vs the piggybacked
> IPMI on that m/b). We found that RMM's power control sometimes doesn't
> work (usually when you need it!). Also it's very tricky indeed to use
> down an ssh tunnel. OTOH if you need the remote device functionality
> there's not really any alternative.

  I also have out-of-band power control, so that shouldn't be a problem.
I assume that anything that borked the system so badly the AXXRMM2 
couldn't power it off isn't going to be made worse by pulling the plug.

  I'll be building one of these systems as a test box before I go and
order the parts for the other 2 (primary, backup, hot spare) so if the
management card is a wast of money, I'll omit it from the other two
builds. At under $170 it's a very small part of the cost of the first
build. [I have 4 Tyan M8239's which were completely non-functional on
the Tyan S2721-533 motherboards in the current systems, so I definite-
ly learned my lesson there.]

        Terry Kennedy             http://www.tmk.com
        terry at tmk.com             New York, NY USA


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