Servers, Storage and my preferred brand HP
To solve the error
# ./install -bash: ./install: /lib/ld-linux.so.2: bad ELF interpreter: No such file or directory
and the font display error when IBM Installation Manager is started, you need to install following packages with yum.
yum install gtk2.i686 libXtst.i686 dejavu-sans-fonts
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 !
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
Yesterday I received the news that Oracle plans to port their own Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, to SPARC. A pretty cool idea. But after talking with a very good friend I’m not sure if this news is a good news.
Why pay lot’s of money for porting a operating system to a new platform? Oracle owns Solaris and everbody knows that’s a proven and stable operating system for SPARC. Lot’s of application and tools are available for Solaris, too. With the upcoming Solaris 11 release you even get more new features that other operating systems cannot offer.
Or think about mission critical systems. With Solaris and Sun Cluster you have rock solid high available system. Many companies running such configurations several years with success.
From an economic perspective it’s not a good decision, too. Oracle have to invest lot’s of money for the SPARC port and then Oracle have to maintain two similar operating systems for the same target. In another words, Oracle pays for developing four operating systems!!! Solaris SPARC and Solaris x86, OEL SPARC and OEL x86.
That’s not the typical Oracle business! Of course, Oracle supports different platforms but do not offer two identical software products.
Is this perhaps the dead of Solaris? Maybe Oracle plans to port everything to Linux and to stop developing on Solaris? What do you think? Feel free to comment!
To add a new alternative for java execute following commands. Current system is CentOS 4.8 x86 Linux.
# alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre/bin/java 100 \ --slave /usr/lib/jvm/jre jre /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre \ --slave /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.4.2 jre-1.4.2 /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre \ --slave /usr/bin/rmiregistry rmiregistry /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre/bin/rmiregistry # alternatives --config java There are 2 programs which provide 'java'. Selection Command ----------------------------------------------- *+ 1 /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.4.2-gcj/bin/java 2 /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre/bin/java Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number: 2
In case of the IBM JRE you need to override the symbolic links for /usr/bin/java and /usr/bin/rmiregistry. Otherwise the java executives cannot locate required libs under /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre/bin/classic. This is not required for other JREs for example Oracle/Sun JRE.
# ln -s /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre/bin/java /usr/bin/java # ln -s /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre/bin/rmiregistry /usr/bin/rmiregistry
I modified the /etc/profile and added the environment variable JAVA_HOME.
Done!
At work we decided to implement Nagios as a monitoring tool. A colleague started to install and configure Nagios Core and some add-ons. But I was not really happy with it. Nagios Core is very uncomfortable and complicated and the add-ons are not mature enough for productive usage. That’s why I decided to search for another solution based on Nagios. After looking for appropriate products I choose op5 (www.op5.com). I started to install and configure op5 at home on a Centos 5.5 i386 based virtual machine. Nagios himself remains complex but op5 make life easier. The most important feature is the web based configuration tool of all Nagios settings. I implemented a small test lab and I was surprised how many Check-Scripts op5 offers. Op5 supports VMware ESX, several HP based SNMP queries, and lots of more. A very nice tool! Below you see the tactical overview of my home lab.
Mal wieder was zum Nachschlagen.
[root@ius022 install]# /opt/VRTS/bin/vxdisksetup -i sdb [root@ius022 install]# vxdg init datadg disk01=sdb [root@ius022 install]# vxassist -g datadg maxsize Maximum volume size: 83695616 (40867Mb) [root@ius022 install]# vxassist -g datadg make datavol 40000m layout=nostripe [root@ius022 install]# mkfs -t vxfs /dev/vx/rdsk/datadg/datavol version 7 layout 81920000 sectors, 40960000 blocks of size 1024, log size 65536 blocks largefiles supported [root@ius022 install]# mkdir /data [root@ius022 install]# mount -t vxfs /dev/vx/dsk/datadg/datavol /data [root@ius022 install]#
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
