Rahul Nabar wrote:
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 11:54 AM, Joe Landman
<[email protected]> wrote:
If I were building a cluster of anything more than 4 machines (not racks,
machines), I would be insisting upon IPMI 2.0 with a working SOL and kvm
over IP capability built in.
Thanks for those tips Joe. I am already convinced by all the posts on
the list that IPMI is a must. No other way. All you guys seem pretty
unanimous about that much!
For the 250-300 machine system you are looking at, you *want* IPMI 2.0 with
KVM over IP. You *want* switched remotely accessible PDUs, for those times
when IPMI itself gets wedged (rarer these days, but it does still happen).
IMO you *want* this IPMI on a separate network. You *want* a serial
concentrator type system to provide a redundant path in the event of an IPMI
failure. Problems don't go away just because IPMI stopped working. You
*need* an inexpensive crash cart that just works, and plugs into your PDUs.
I see, thanks for disabusing me of my notion of "ipmi" as one
monolithic all-or-none creature. From what you write (and my online
reading) it seems there are several discrete parts:
IMPI 2.0
switched remotely accessible PDUs
"serial concentrator type system "
Correct me if I am wrong but these are all "options" and varying
vendors and implementations will offer parts or all or none of these?
Yes.
Or is it that when one says "IPMI 2" it includes all these features. I
IPMI 2.0 includes
* local power control (on-off switch in software)
* Serial-over-lan
* system sensor inspection
It *may* contain kvm over IP (the clusters we build do).
did read online but these implementation seem vendor specific so its
hard to translate jargon across vendors. e.g. for Dell they are called
DRAC's etc.
IPMI 2.0 at minimum is a must. DRAC has levels which also provide kvm
over IP, though at additional cost.
Finally, what's a"serial concentrator"? Isn't that the same as the
SOL that Skylar was explaining to me? Or is that something different
too?
Something different. A serial concentrator is a machine you can ssh
into providing N serial ports. It is different than the IPMI SOL
capability. It is a second non-IPMI management channel. For large
systems, I'd recommend multiple administrative paths ...
--
Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
Scalable Informatics Inc.
email: [email protected]
web : http://scalableinformatics.com
http://scalableinformatics.com/jackrabbit
phone: +1 734 786 8423 x121
fax : +1 866 888 3112
cell : +1 734 612 4615
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