Monthly Archive for Mai, 2011

My first experience with IBM Power blades and AIX

It’s done. I have a running IBM BladeCenter-based Power server environment with a current release of AIX and VIOS. At the beginning I had some problems, but the IBM world was entirely new for me. ;) But after I get my NIMOL (NIM on Linux) server with VIOS 2.2 image up and running, it was a very easy journey. Wow!

The BladeCenter E management software look and feels very outdated (there are lot’s of improvements with the Advanced Management Module), but when I started the VIOS Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM) I was very suprised. The IVM is easy to use and looks great! :) I uploaded my AIX 7.1 images and setup an optical library. The installation of AIX was straight forward. Compared to Solaris LDoms even a Windows Administrator is able to setup an IBM LPar! The HP Integrity Virtual Machines can be managed thru a Web-based UI, too. But in my opinion IBM did a better job!

After setup of AIX, I tried to install a WPar. I missed a similar UI as IVM, but since AIX 7.1 IBM moves everything to the IBM System Director. So I did all steps with CLI and I did it within few minutes. I’m thrilled! Solaris 10 offers a very good implementation of shell based commands, but AIX too! I played around a little bit with AIX and of course I noticed that AIX is different to other UNIX operating systems. But it’s not a problem. By the way, the JS21 blades with 2,3 GHz PowerPC 970 processor are fast. Everything runs very quick and smooth. That’s nice! I don’t know if the blades can outperform my Sun Fire V480 with UltraSPARC 4+ at 1,5 GHz or my HP Integrity BL860c with 1,4 GHz Itanium2 9120N CPUs. But it doesn’t matter. The main thing is that AIX 7.1 runs fast and I’m able to do several tests with AIX and the IBM Power architecture.

Of course I’m still very confident with HP products, but I will continue my experience with IBM Power and AIX. It’s a very interesting and future-proofed platform. And now enjoy some pictures of my IBM journey.


Say “Hallo” to my HP MicroServer

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. :D That’s lot’s of money. :) Thank you HP for this great server!!!

IBM BladeCenter E

Yesterday I received a new toy for my home lab: An IBM BladeCenter E

Two weeks ago I auctioned two IBM JS21 power blades for very little money, because a rack based IBM Power4 oder Power5 server is incredible expensive. Even an outdatet pSeries 615/630 with slow 1 GHz Power4 processor is not affordable. I don’t like to pay several hundreds Euros for a low performance server. That’s why I decided to catch the mentioned JS21 power blades. ;) Running these blades requires an IBM BladeCenter, of course and a member of my preferred Unix board offered me one with lot’s important accessoirs. Here it is, with two 2000 W power supplys, two Cisco Systems Intelligent Gigabit Ethernet Switch Module and two Brocade Fibre Channel Switch Modules. An IBM HS20 x86 blade is installed, too. Very nice, because the two JS21 blades aren’t yet shipped.

Compared to my HP c-Class BladeSystem the IBM BladeCenter is very outdated. Only four I/O modules – yes, I know, the BladeCenter H offers 8 I/O modules – and the design and packaging of the IBM blade server isn’t that nice and modern like my HP blade servers. But I know the IBM BladeCenter E is a very old system. It exists much longer than the newer HP c-Class BladeSystem and I’m only interessted in running a current release of AIX. ;) Combined with the nice I/O modules it’s a very good deal.

ibm_bladecenter_e1

ibm_bladecenter_e2