HP DL380 Gen9 question -- remove all drives and send to another identical server...
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@flomer said:
Anyway, the VM layer will introduce a layer that will need a little bit of training, and it might seem more complicated to our customers. ?
Which means that having a server at all is far beyond their ability to support. If virtualization is complex, why do they accept RAID? That is way more complex.
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Well, RAID is often a requirement, and will be specified in the functional description. The idea is of course that it adds to the uptime, and that a failed drive does not make the "instrument" usable. Then again, when a drive fails it will most probably go unnoticed (the server is isolated and out of our reach), and it might perhaps be noticed if service personnel from our company is on the premises for other reasons. We are quite appalled by how our customer treats some of this equipment (some never take back-ups), but it's difficult for us to change this. Our servers are often small add-ons to tons of steel that make up the rest of the multi-million dollar deliveries. The value of our systems (production monitoring) is often not realized until after the field is in production.
But, seriously, how would you go about installing the hypervisor. On an internal SATA-DOM or USB, and who will administer the hypervisor. We are often only allotted an IP-address. I can see that introducing the hypervisor with an IP in addition will make the IT guyes freak out. Then again, perhaps not. They might be all for it. I will try to investigate this on our next project.
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@flomer said:
Well, RAID is often a requirement, and will be specified in the functional description. The idea is of course that it adds to the uptime...
Exactly my point, same reasoning that we use virtualization. The logic that makes one unreasonable to skip, does the same to the other.
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@flomer said:
. I can see that introducing the hypervisor with an IP in addition will make the IT guyes freak out. Then again, perhaps not. They might be all for it. I will try to investigate this on our next project.
Are these children running their IT? Are they freaking out about your ILO IP address currently? What's the difference?
If someone is freaking out about the most basic server fundamentals, you have really major issues to tackle.
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@flomer said:
But, seriously, how would you go about installing the hypervisor. On an internal SATA-DOM or USB, and who will administer the hypervisor.
Who administers the server currently? It would likely be the same person. Admining the hypervisor is a basic part of any piece of equipment being installed anywhere, so there should not be any process change and no new question here. Who is maintaining the hardware, the ILO, the OS, etc. currently?
Where you install depends on your goals, the products that you use, etc. If Hyper-V likely you will install to the main array. If VMware likely to the SD card.
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@flomer said:
I can see that introducing the hypervisor with an IP in addition will make the IT guyes freak out.
They should be freaking out that you haven't given them the IP addresses for the hypervisor and the OOB already.
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Things to consider in a discussion about virtualization....
- How are backups being handled now? Are you able to take images? Virtualization is not a requirement for good backups, but it is the general foundation of them.
- How are system updates and patches handled? Are you able to take system snapshots and roll back if something goes wrong? If not, isn't that really risky?
- How do you redeploy the software is something goes wrong? The issue that you are facing right now seems pretty dramatic. This would be a very simple issue had things been virtualized.
- How do you remotely access the system to support the software if anything goes wrong with Windows? What is your out of band management strategy without virtualization?
- How do you address driver stability, normally handled by virtualization?
- How do you handle new deployments, changes, OS updates, etc.?
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LOL, I'm guessing they aren't using iLo, Scott. That would require two ethernet cables.
I agree with Scott, assuming you have any influence at your company... now is a great time to look at your entire deployment process. Revamp it to include the requirement of iLo and a hypervisor just like I'm guessing that you require RAID.
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@Dashrender said:
LOL, I'm guessing they aren't using iLo, Scott. That would require two ethernet cables.
Why would they be paying for HP gear and skipping the stuff that makes it valuable? You lose tons of the value of HP gear if you disable their management and monitoring tools.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
LOL, I'm guessing they aren't using iLo, Scott. That would require two ethernet cables.
Why would they be paying for HP gear and skipping the stuff that makes it valuable? You lose tons of the value of HP gear if you disable their management and monitoring tools.
Because that's what the vendor sells. You can lead a horse to water...
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@scottalanmiller I will try to investigate this and try to get in touch with our customer's IT dept. early in the process for our next project. It will be interesting to see what will happen. Already it is quite puzzling that most customers want us to deliver the hardware, rather than just providing a server to us, or ask us for a VM. I guess that should be an indication the the instrumentation part of offshore business is a little "special" when it comes to these things.
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@flomer said:
@scottalanmiller I will try to investigate this and try to get in touch with our customer's IT dept. early in the process for our next project. It will be interesting to see what will happen. Already it is quite puzzling that most customers want us to deliver the hardware, rather than just providing a server to us, or ask us for a VM. I guess that should be an indication the the instrumentation part of offshore business is a little "special" when it comes to these things.
To be fair, instrumentation people do have lots of weird add in cards. It's possible (not probable) that they have some hardware that doesn't play nice inside a VM.
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If these are offshore systems, it seems likely that they might not have internet access out there. Remote support might be sole by phone or radio.
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@Dashrender said:
If these are offshore systems, it seems likely that they might not have internet access out there. Remote support might be sole by phone or radio.
Which would just make use of a hypervisor even more important. Can you even compare walking someone through rebuilding a server compared to talking them through copying a file and starting it on another box. I got all the steps in a single run-on sentence!
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@flomer said:
@scottalanmiller I will try to investigate this and try to get in touch with our customer's IT dept. early in the process for our next project. It will be interesting to see what will happen. Already it is quite puzzling that most customers want us to deliver the hardware, rather than just providing a server to us, or ask us for a VM. I guess that should be an indication the the instrumentation part of offshore business is a little "special" when it comes to these things.
Supplying hardware is fine and normal, but it should still be "treated well." The customer is trusting you to do the best job possible and support everything top to bottom. Big vendors like Oracle and IBM do this all of the time. This allows you to be responsible for every decision, every short coming, every benefit, etc.
So, for example, in this case, any problems arising from bad RAID selection, bad hardware selection, lacking virtualization, ILO not being configured... is all your issue, not the customer's. If they supplied their own hardware, you could blame them for not doing things well. Since they get everything from you, all risks associated with lacking virtualization and ILO, for example, can be pushed off to you.
Same reason that we like working with Scale for HA clusters... they certify every component in the system and certify them all together. The storage, servers, software, virtualization, remote access, networking, NIC cards, patches, BIOS firmware... you name it, they test and certify every piece so that there are no surprises in the field. Those are things that the customer cannot realistically do on their own.
That's why customers want their vendors to supply the whole thing as an appliance rather than as software for them to maintain themselves.
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Well, it's not so simple for us. We usually have no remote support, and it's up to the customer's IT dept. to take care of things once the system leaves our premises. After commissioning we often don't even have admin rights. It's really puzzling, but we often feel that we abandon the systems once the customer takes over. Our company do have service personnel on the customer's site regularly, but that is for other tasks, and not to service our system. We have had cases where we have been told that "the machine beeps, it's been like that for 3 months"... I guess you could say that someone, somewhere has a job to do. I will try to investigate this when we get our next project. We are often a sub contractor, and we rarely speak to the end user or the IT staff supporting him in the early stages of a project.
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@travisdh1 said:
To be fair, instrumentation people do have lots of weird add in cards. It's possible (not probable) that they have some hardware that doesn't play nice inside a VM.
Instrumentation is the key piece here @scottalanmiller. These things are very often proprietary add in cards. Being proprietary, there is very little chance for the hypervisor vendors to support them.
I have a client in the oil industry with servers running various versions of RHEL (4 and 5 mostly). They are not capable of being virtualized due to a serial card that cannot be passed through in Hyper-V Server or VMWare.
Of course the OS can be virtualized, but without the access to the serial fed data, there is no point to the OS. The industry has a new solution that is not yet certified. Once certified, I am certain adoption will be quick, but it will not be immediate because it will require millions of dollars in hardware replacement.
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@JaredBusch said:
Instrumentation is the key piece here @scottalanmiller. These things are very often proprietary add in cards. Being proprietary, there is very little chance for the hypervisor vendors to support them.
Agreed, if there is very special add-in hardware. Although that feels unlikely given the manner in which the hardware is being handled. Doesn't mean that that impression is correct, but having worked on the hardware vendor side of that if we were doing that kind of stuff we would either abstract it using a sensor device separate from the server itself or, more likely, be on site to get hardware working properly because it is so unique that the customer can't just add it in and get it working.
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This conversation is no different for the hundreds of others we'd had and seen - many industries and businesses do not care about their IT, and never keep modern - Look at my CAT scan machine installed in 2008 that came with Windows 2000, or a print businesses print server coming with XP in 2010.
As Scott reminded me again yesterday - it's not our responsibility to care more about the business than the business drivers/owners.
Even so, I just can't help that, I want things I'm involved with to be better.
