On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 12:56:07PM -0700, [email protected] wrote: <snip> > I need to have a vendor who will make sure that what they sell me works > under linux. > > I currently have a AMD based infrastructure and would like to stay with > AMD (avoiding the poliferation of different kernels that I need to > maintain) > > I need the ability to specify things like CD/DVD burners (which leaves out > Sun/IBM/Dell/HP who only sell optical readers in their systems)
That's not really true anymore - HP for sure will sell you servers with a DVD-RW, and I'm fairly sure Dell did last time I ordered from them. We've got some new HP DL380 G6 2U servers in with dual quad-core procs (Intel in this case), and 6 PCI-e gen 2 slots - 2 x8, and 4 x4. Looks like you can get the DL385 G5P (http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13161_na/13161_na.html) with an equivalent numbers/widths of slots, just Gen2 PCIe. Should be plenty fine for quad port Gig-e. The G5ps also have 4 onboard gig-e connections vs. 2 from the last gen. All this in only 2U :) You should easily be able to configure a machine as you've spec'ed below. Just be careful and look at the spec sheet to determine how many full-height vs. low-profile NICs you'd need to get. iLO should be able to handle your remote power needs. Console over serial has "just worked" for us with most of our HP servers. Sometimes we need to enable it in the BIOS, sometimes not. > I frequently need lots of card slots in a box, so it can't be a vendor > that only sells 1u and 2u systems > > a common config that I buy is > > 2xquad-core cpu's > 8G ram > 1 hard drive > DVD burner > floppy > 1x quad ethernet card > > must support serial console access to BIOS and power control (I could talk > about switching to network access) We used to be a Dell shop, but our HP VAR ended up being a lot more responsive than our Dell VAR, so we're gradually making the shift that way. The HP hardware "feels" a bit more robust than the equivalent Dell (at least the 29xx gen, haven't played with the new Rxxx stuff yet). However, Dell is a bit more clueful on the software side. They provide YUM repositories for the their management software. HP gives you some tarballs and an installer. Either vendor should be able to provide similar configs. hope this has been somewhat useful... -jkl _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
