Servers, Storage and my preferred brand HP
Say Hello to Shorty ! 
Shorty is running an Ubuntu OpenStack Cloud Computing environment. It is connected to a MSA2012fc storage system and a ProCurve 5406zl modular network switch. The 10 GbE uplink to the 10 GbE 4-port module is prepared, but the CX4 X2 module is missing to complete the connection. I will order the X2 module within the next weeks. 
I know my blog is very silent since several weeks. But I have lot’s of work and of course a daughter.;)
As you can imagine I have some new ideas for my home lab. And one is very exciting ! I started to rethink and rebuild my HP blade environment. Yesterday a new toy arrived. Have a look at the backside of my HP c-Class BladeSystem. You can see a very important interconnect module for a Converged Infrastructure.
As posted below I planned to build a network upon HP ProCurve. But I noticed that I need a premium license for features like VRRP and OSPF. But these two features are neccessary for my new Home-Lab network infrastructure. I like to create a enterprise network for my systems and not a simple 192.168.x.x home network. That’s why I switched to big Cisco 6506 modular switches. Cisco isn’t cheap, but it offers all features I need. Buying 3 HP ProCurve licenses is impossible, I don’t earn so much money. Let’s say hello to my first Cisco 6506 switch. The second 6506 is below and I will receive a Sup2 engine with MSFC2 the next weeks.
I hope you followers haven’t forget my blog. Please stay tuned! The next months will be very exciting. I’m saving money for a HP MDS 600.
Kind regards
Tschokko
Lot’s of time passed since my last posting. But now I will continue blogging about my home lab. Some months ago I moved my neccessary systems to a HP MicroServer, because the running costs of a real server are enormous! After I finished setup my new home network, I decided to change the entire networking in my home lab. Until now I run the same home network subnet (192.168.x.x) for all systems. That’s not a real enterprise environment. For my home use here at my desk it’s good enough, but not for my home lab in the cellar! Today I started configuring a classic multi layered network. I’m running a HP ProCurve 5406zl modular switch as my network core. This core is connected to my home network in the first floor and to a pair of HP ProCurve 3500yl switches. The two switches represent a typical distribution layer. All connection to the core switch are L3 based. I’m running a linux router on my HP MicroServer with a RIP daemon. The linux router is my default gateway in my home network and thanks to RIP it knows all routes to the IP subnets in my home lab. I prefer OSPF, but I have no premium license for the HP ProCurve switches. That’s why I’m using RIP. It’s doing a well job, too.
Next step is the reassembly of my HP rack. I planned to unify the blade server environment and to create a full virtualized lab or should I say a cloud enabled home lab?
As mentioned in my previous blog, I started to rebuild my necessary home systems. Last year I was running some servers in my home lab, but my power bill was a shock! I decided to replace everything with a HP MicroServer. Since two months my HP MicroServer is doing a very good job. It’s a very fast and economical system. It consumes about 76 Watt. I installed four 2 TB Seagate disks and connected them to a HP SmartArray P410 controller with 512 MB BBWC. The storage is incredible fast. I’m running a RAID-6 ADG with 4 TB usable capacity. VMware ESX 4i is booted from an USB stick. My file and media server is entirely virtualized. I used CentOS 5.6 as base system and attached four 1 TB virtual disks. I grouped the four disks with LVM2 and my data is striped across all disks. An additional CentOS 5.6 system is dedicated for network services including NTPD, DNS, DHCP and even DHCPv6. My network is IPv6 enabled and I’m running my own IPv6 prefix provided by sixxs.net. The HP MicroServer with 8 GB RAM is capable to run even more systems parallel. Quick trys don’t requires to turn on my home lab in my cellar. That’s very comfortable. And I’m saving round about 4.000 kW/h per year. 
That’s lot’s of money. Thank you HP for this great server!!!
Here I am back again. The last weeks I had lot’s of work, so there was only little time for my blog and private activities. But this was a big chance to turn off lot’s systems in my home lab and run only the necessary servers for my home network. I watched 2 months my power consumption and I was really scared. Currently I’m running a HP ProCurve 3500yl switch, a HP ProLiant DL185 G5 as a file server and a HP ProLiant DL385 G5p as a VMware ESXi host server with several virtual machines, e.g. a Windows Active Directory Server, and and and… The power consumption is too heavy for home use! My power bill for 2010 was a slap in the face. I consumed 11,500 kWh and had to pay lot’s of money. 
That’s too much! It’s time to change this circumstance.
Currently I’m working on a replacement for the two servers and the switch above. The three systems takes 450 Watt power and running them all the time effects in 3,500 kWh per year. I have to pay 23 ct per kWh and about 800 Euros for 12 months. That’s not acceptable any more! Time to turn them off.
I decided to evaluate a HP ProLiant MicroServer! Next Tuesday the server arrives at work… Meanwhile I thought about which operating system, which kind of RAID redundancy and which kind of server virtualization software I like to run on the new HP ProLiant MicroServer and the results are my change No. 2.
Everybody knows that I love Solaris and OpenSolaris/Solaris Express. But I don’t like Oracle! Since Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, the Solaris operating system and the Sun servers are getting more and more unpopular. The last announcement that Oracle stops the Itanium support frightened me. Larry seems to going crazy… Now I’m not sure about the future of Solaris and Solaris Express, so I decided to change my file server to Linux. Windows is not an option for me. Of course Windows Home Server or the Small Business Server looks pretty cool and comfortable, but I prefer a console.
My current thoughts are running CentOS 5.5 x86_64 with Ext4 support on the HP ProLiant MicroServer. I will install four 2 TB SATA disks and connect them to a HP Smart Array P212 controller with 256 MB BBWC cache and advanced license. The four disks should form a RAID-6 volume. As virtualization software I will try out the free VMware Server 2 on top of CentOS. I have lot’s of good experience with VirtualBox, but it’s an Oracle product and no more option for me.
My new home server will be connected to an 8-Port HP ProCurve E2520-8G switch and will replace the three systems mentioned above in my home lab. All these modifications will result in a power consumption less than 100 Watts and an important independence of Oracle. I can save 600 Euros per year and my system is supported for a long time, even if Larry is going entirely crazy.
But there’s a change No. 3 ! The last two weeks I played with IPv6, the next generation Internet Protocol. It’s awesome!!! Currently I’m running a Linux server which is connect via an IPv6 tunnel to the Internet. I ordered my own IPv6 network prefix at www.sixxs.net and cannot wait until I can give all my systems a public IPv6 address. I will change my entire network, this includes my private office and my home lab, to IPv6.
In summary I’m changing my home network to a Green-IT solution with long term support and with the implementation of IPv6 at home, I’m ready for the future.
Stay tuned !
The next reminder…
Fast introduction into installing an Ignite-UX install server for HP-UX.
Remember ILO2 Virtual Media is terrible slow! Put all HP-UX ISO on a NFS server, extract the contents into folders and export the file system. Mount the NFS share on your HP-UX server, for example:
# mount -F nfs ius025:/export/iso-images/hpux /mnt
Now install Ignite-UX. You can find the Ignite-UX depots on the HP-UX 11.31 OS DVD #3. Or use the NFS share, which was created above.
# swinstall -s /mnt/os3
Mark Ignite-UX-11-31 (or IGNITE for all OS versions).
Go to Actions -> Install…
Reboot !
After reboot mount the NFS share with the extracted ISO contents again. Check free space on your /var file system. 16 GB should be enough. Run following commands:
# make_depots -r B.11.31 -s /mnt/os1 # make_depots -r B.11.31 -s /mnt/os2 # make_depots -r B.11.31 -s /mnt/os3 # make_depots -r B.11.31 -s /mnt/app1 # make_depots -r B.11.31 -s /mnt/app2 # /opt/ignite/bin/make_config -c /var/opt/ignite/data/Rel_B.11.31/core_cfg –s \ <ip>:/var/opt/ignite/depots/Rel_B.11.31/core # manage_index -a -f /var/opt/ignite/data/Rel_B.11.31/core_cfg -r B.11.31
Check if the NFS server daemon is running. If not enable it. The same procedure for tftpd . If you are using an external DHCP server with PXE capabilities you don’t need to enable BOOTP on the Ignite-UX server. By default you don’t need to change the settings in /etc/inetd.conf.
Setup PXE with Ignite-UX settings on a Microsoft DHCP server.
The most important settings are Option 66 Boot Server which should point to the Ignite-UX server and the Boot File Option 67 which should contain “/opt/ignite/boot/nbp.efi“.
That’s it ! Now you should be able to boot the Integrity VM over network and run the HP-UX setup.
I’m sure many people thinking about HP-UX as an old and complicated UNIX operating system. But is that right? No! Below I will show you how easy you can drive HP-UX…
I’m running the latest release of HP-UX 11.31 on a HP Integrity BL860c blade server. Between the well know 11.11 release of HP-UX and the latest version of HP-UX 11.31 there are lots of changes. The most important change is the entire move from SAM to the HP System Management Homepage (SMH). With the SMH you can configure your HP-UX system very comfortable with a web-based user interface. Another important enhancement is Integrity Virtual Machines! With Integrity VM you can easily virtualize HP-UX, Windows and Linux on a HP Integrity server. Today I want to show you a little bit about these two nice and powerful features. And you can see that HP-UX is not an old and complicated UNIX operating system. It’s comfortable, powerful and offers lot’s of functionality. But nobody is writing about it. It’s time to change this.
After setup of HP-UX it’s important to check the network settings. The hostname should be in /etc/hosts, your /etc/resolv.conf should have the right entries and of course you need a /etc/nsswitch.conf. Copy /etc/nsswitch.files to /etc/nsswich.conf and modify the following lines:
hosts: files dns
ipnodes: files dns
These network setting are very important, otherwise you could have several problems.
Let’s go installing Integrity VM.
Insert the HP-UX Application DVD #1 into your DVD drive or ILO Virtual Media.
Logon to your HP-UX system with enabled X11 forwarding!
$ ssh -X root@hpux
Find the DVD drive.
# ioscan -fnC disk
Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description ===================================================================== disk 1 0/3/0/0/0/0.1.0.0.0.0.1 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE HP HSV200 /dev/dsk/c3t0d1 /dev/dsk/c3t0d1s2 /dev/rdsk/c3t0d1 /dev/rdsk/c3t0d1s2 /dev/dsk/c3t0d1s1 /dev/dsk/c3t0d1s3 /dev/rdsk/c3t0d1s1 /dev/rdsk/c3t0d1s3 disk 0 0/3/0/0/0/0.1.1.0.0.0.1 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE HP HSV200 /dev/dsk/c1t0d1 /dev/dsk/c1t0d1s2 /dev/rdsk/c1t0d1 /dev/rdsk/c1t0d1s2 /dev/dsk/c1t0d1s1 /dev/dsk/c1t0d1s3 /dev/rdsk/c1t0d1s1 /dev/rdsk/c1t0d1s3 disk 3 0/3/0/0/0/1.1.0.0.0.0.1 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE HP HSV200 /dev/dsk/c7t0d1 /dev/dsk/c7t0d1s2 /dev/rdsk/c7t0d1 /dev/rdsk/c7t0d1s2 /dev/dsk/c7t0d1s1 /dev/dsk/c7t0d1s3 /dev/rdsk/c7t0d1s1 /dev/rdsk/c7t0d1s3 disk 2 0/3/0/0/0/1.1.1.0.0.0.1 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE HP HSV200 /dev/dsk/c5t0d1 /dev/dsk/c5t0d1s2 /dev/rdsk/c5t0d1 /dev/rdsk/c5t0d1s2 /dev/dsk/c5t0d1s1 /dev/dsk/c5t0d1s3 /dev/rdsk/c5t0d1s1 /dev/rdsk/c5t0d1s3 disk 5 255/1/0.0.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE HP Virtual CD-ROM /dev/dsk/c8t0d0 /dev/rdsk/c8t0d0
Mount the DVD and start the installation of Integrity VM.
# mount /dev/dsk/c8t0d0 /mnt # swinstall -s /mnt
Select VMKernelSW
Select Actions -> Install
The system reboots.
Insert the HP-UX Application DVD #2 and install the user interface for Integrity VM.
# mount /dev/dsk/c8t0d0 /mnt
# swinstall -s /mnt
Select VMMGR
Select Actions -> Install
On my HP BL860c Integrity blade server I need to disable Hyperthreading. Otherwise Integrity VM won’t run and you get the following error message:
Error: An error occurred communicating with WBEM: CIM_ERR_FAILED CIM_ERR_FAILED: @1:An internal error has occurred.
# /usr/sbin/setboot -m off
# reboot
Done!
Now copy your HP-UX installation ISO images to /var/opt/hpvm/ISO-images/hpux and then have some fun with the SMH.
I created two 100 GB LUNs with Command View EVA and presented the LUNs to the HP-UX system.
Start you web browser and go to http://hpux:2301
You will be redirected to the SMH and you have to log in with root credentials. In my case I use the root account. It’s a test system.
Select Tools and you see what you can manage everything with the SMH.
I created a volume group to associate the previous generated LUNs. Select Tools → Disk and File Systems → Volume Groups → Create VG…
After you have successfully created a new Volume Group with both LUNs you can create a Logical Volume for the virtual machine.
As you can see I selected “Enable striping” ! Above I create two EVA LUNs and assoicated each LUN to an EVA controller. So I can utilize all host ports and the entire cache of my EVA ! That promise lots of performance.
If you finished creating the Logical Volume, let’s build a Link Aggregate with two free NICs. Go to Tools → Network Interfaces Configuration → Auto Port Aggregation → Create Link Aggregate
With Virtual Connect I cannot create a LACP based link aggregation. So I choose Mode “Manual” and under Advanced Options I selected “LB_PORT” as Load Distribution Algorithm.
Everything easy right now, isn’t it? And you are working with a powerful and mission critical operating system. Unbelieveable!
You have done all prerequisites for the virtual machine. Let’s create a “Virtual Switch” and the “Virtual Machine” himself.
Go to Tools → Integrity Virtual Machines Management → Integrity Virtual Machines Manager
Continue the following screen by clicking OK
Select Virtual Switches → Create → Virtual Switch…
Let’s create the virtual machine, go to Virtual Machines → Create → Virtual Machine…
Preferr AVIO devices! They offers more performance. I use it for storage and networking, except the DVD drive.
After your virtual machine is created successfully, change to a shell.
Start the virtual machine with:
# hpvmstart -P ius022
Join the console with:
# hpvmconsole -P ius022
Enter CO and you can see your virtual machine booting into HP-UX setup.
To change the ISO images during setup, break the console session with <Ctrl>+B, enter EJ for eject and follow the instructions. Type IN for insert, select the ISO image and go back to console with CO to continue the setup procedure. The HP-UX installation with local ISO image should be finished very fast.
So, that’s it ! Enjoy your fresh installed HP-UX virtual machine.
As mentioned above HP-UX isn’t a complicated operating system. You can do lot’s of things with the SMH. HP-UX is well documented, too… I hope you enjoyed my little introduction to HP-UX 11.31 on HP Integrity servers. More on HP-UX will follow soon.
Again a little reminder for me.
Install CentOS/RHEL 5.x
Update the system with yum update
Reboot
# yum install expect # yum install libnl # yum install net-snmp
Download HP System Health Application and Command Line Utilities for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (AMD64/EM64T). You get a file like hp-health-8.6.0.24-25.rhel5.x86_64.rpm. Install this package:
# rpm -ivh /home/locadm/hp-health-8.6.0.24-25.rhel5.x86_64.rpm # service hp-health start # service hp-asrd start # chkconfig hp-health on # chkconfig hp-asrd on
Download HP SNMP Agents for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (AMD64/EM64T). You get a file like hp-snmp-agents-8.6.0.18-17.rhel5.x86_64.rpm. Install this package:
# rpm -ivh /home/locadm/hp-snmp-agents-8.6.0.18-17.rhel5.x86_64.rpm # /sbin/hpsnmpconfig # service hp-snmp-agents start # chkconfig hp-snmp-agents on
Download HP SmartStart CD x64. You get a file like smartstart-8.60-0-x64.zip. Install this file:
# unzip smartstart-8.60-0-x64.zip # mount -o loop SS860.2010_0909.41-x64.iso /mnt # /mnt/autorun
Software -> Install ProLiant Support Pack -> …
Reboot
Modify iptables firewall
# vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables ... -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 2301 -j ACCEPT -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 2381 -j ACCEPT ... # service iptables restart
Get Multi-path Device Mapper for Linux Software. Go to hp.com -> Support & Drivers -> Download drivers and software (and firmware) -> For product: Linux
Select Multi-path Device Mapper for Linux Software
Select Device Mapper Multipath Enablement Kit for HP StorageWorks Disk Arrays
Download HPDMmultipath-4.4.1.tar.gz
# tar zxvf HPDMmultipath-4.4.1.tar.gz # cd HPDMmultipath-4.4.1 # ./INSTALL # reboot
Enable Multipathing
# chkconfig multipathd on # service multipathd start
Time to say good bye… My HP StorageWorks EVA 5000 was a big challenge. A few years ago I started this project with one HSV110 controller. Step by step I created my own EVA 5000 with parts that I bought everywhere in the world. Since two years this system is running in my home lab, but it’s old and slow. I upgraded the system to 56 disks but the performance increase was not as mentioned. I decided to sell the entire system, but there was no buyer. But thank god I had the chance to get a pair of EVA 4000 (HSV200-A) controllers. Today a big package arrived at home! Lot’s of parts for a big upgrade to an EVA 4000.
Say hello to my new storage system: The HP StorageWorks EVA 4000
The performance raise is phenomenal. The EVA 4000 is 2-3x faster than the old EVA 5000. I didn’t expect this performance increase. That’s absolutely great! I love that new toy…
Today my hard disk hot-swap trays arrived. Yippiieee… time to complete my storage server. The new hot-swap trays had no labels, so I created them myself. It looks pretty nice!
Next step is getting some more disks and a suitable rackmount-kit. My private datacenter grows and grows.
Name: Tschokko
Gender: male
Birthday: 20.09.1977
Job: Solution Architect
Interests: My girlfriend, my daugther "Lina", two big white cats named "Lilly" & "Felix", delicious food, German beer, Servers, Storage, SAN, networks, IT-Infrastructure
