I am thinking about purchasing a blade server for our company to run our xen servers. unfortunately i am not too familiar with how a blade server works... my understanding is that you have on central enclosure that handles things like power supply and such. and then you have the blades which are basically individual computers with cpu/memory/hdd. so could xen be installed on such hardware? where are the network interfaces located? on the blades or the encloser? TIA, Tomoki _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 03:44 +0900, Tomoki Taniguchi wrote:> > so could xen be installed on such hardware?Yes, the OS can''t tell the difference, it looks like a normal machine, which is somewhat the point.> where are the network interfaces located? > on the blades or the encloser?This is dependent on the hardware vendor, but to the machine, won''t matter (see above). IBM xSeries Bladecenters (I can personally very strongly recommend these) actually have Cisco switch modules that plug in in the back and look like normal gig switches. Internally, you''re given two ethN devices on the linux host -- the ethernet cards are on the blades themselves. John -- John Madden Sr. UNIX Systems Engineer Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana jmadden@ivytech.edu _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Hi Tomoki, I evaluated an ibm bladecenter 8878 with hs21 and hs20 blades in it from Oct of last year to february of this year. If you are interested, talk to the specific vendors. Pay attention to how they answer your questions and listen to you to give you a sense of how good they are in supporting you. We went through no end of headache getting the BCM5708S ethernet drivers for the chassis to work, getting the right power cables for our datacenter and I''ll never order anything from them again. To give you an example, we were planning on using the 13 u chassis to save the space of 14 u of dell 860''s. But the ibm 8878 chassis has power cables that are massive 3awt and require 220v power. The savings of density for the chassis was lost in extranous copper cables. If you contact a sales rep from dell, or hp or ibm, I''m sure they will be happy to chew your ear off about functionality, and ibm is a xensource partner. They may even let you try one in your datacenter or in one of their labs if you are sweet enough in how you approach them. Mike _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
I am currently using the ibm blade centers with xen and it works flawlessly only troubles i have run into was the fiber card the driver was a little hard but partly due to the fact we were not using a normal ibm supported os. Tomoki Taniguchi wrote:> I am thinking about purchasing a blade server for our company to run > our xen servers. > > unfortunately i am not too familiar with how a blade server works... > my understanding is that you have on central enclosure that handles things like > power supply and such. > and then you have the blades which are basically individual computers > with cpu/memory/hdd. > > so could xen be installed on such hardware? > where are the network interfaces located? > on the blades or the encloser? > > TIA, > Tomoki > > _______________________________________________ > Xen-users mailing list > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com > http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users >The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete this material from any computer. In accordance with industry regulations, all messages are retained and are subject to monitoring. This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content and is believed to be clean. Securities offered through Cantella & Co., Inc., Member NASD/SIPC. Home Office: 2 Oliver Street, 11th Floor, Boston, MA 02109 Telephone: (617)521-8630 _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
John Madden wrote:> On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 03:44 +0900, Tomoki Taniguchi wrote: > >> so could xen be installed on such hardware? >> > > Yes, the OS can''t tell the difference, it looks like a normal machine, > which is somewhat the point. > > >> where are the network interfaces located? >> on the blades or the encloser? >> > > This is dependent on the hardware vendor, but to the machine, won''t > matter (see above). IBM xSeries Bladecenters (I can personally very > strongly recommend these) actually have Cisco switch modules that plug > in in the back and look like normal gig switches. Internally, you''re > given two ethN devices on the linux host -- the ethernet cards are on > the blades themselves. >From experience, they''re typically on a network switch that''s part of the enclusure itself. High end blades, such as the very sweet IBM bladecenters, have a built-in management console to provide remote KVM access to individual blades. (It''s actually VNC based, which made me laugh like hell when I realized because I wrote one of the early SunOS ports of VNC, so I was already aware of some of its limitations.) You want to think, hard, about whether the switching configurations on them is what you want if you''re doing high performance computing. The internal switches aren''t normally very sophisticated nor extremely high bandwidth, and can be saturatied by massive traffic, such as running lots and lots of NFS based operating systems. Xen iSCSI or NFS based OS''s could compound the problem, since these systems typically do not have a lot of local disk storage, and what they have is typically 2.5" hard drive based. More money, more features and better testing of the hardware before it arrives on your doorstep. Less money, cheaper blades, inferior "motherboards of the week" that fell off some employee''s uncle''s truck in Taiwan, inferior and out-of-date add-on components, untested serial console features, amazingly stupid BIOS defaults, no remote KVM, untested RAM, fans that work better as paperweights, ducting made out of what acts like tin foil, etc. Like all systems, you can save a lot of money up-front and wind up seriously paying for it down the road. (I''ve seen this happen, up close and personal.) I''ve been involved in designing blades and Beowulf clusters: I wish I''d had Xen for blade use when I was doing that, it could have saved me a lot of kernel upgrade pain. _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Chris Richardson wrote:> I am currently using the ibm blade centers with xen and it works > flawlessly only troubles i have run into was the fiber card the driver > was a little hard but partly due to the fact we were not using a > normal ibm supported os.Out of curiosity, why are you using fiber? I''ve been pushing GigE for such blades for some time, for ease of maintenance, cheapness of fiber, and stability of drivers. _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users