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Poweredge 2970

Offline devtay

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Poweredge 2970
« on: January 25, 2010, 03:51:40 PM »
Got a deal today on a returned Poweredge 2970. Decided to jump on this one because my old server is getting slow with all of the load. Its a quad core opteron with 4G memory and dual Broadcom NetExtreme 5709 NICs. Also comes with a Perc6i RAID controller and three drives (looks like software RAID 1 with a hot swap config from the wiki). The system says to be RHEL certified through 5.

I am looking to see if anyone has any experience with this model server. Specifically, any problems with installing, configuring or running SME Server 7.4 (looking on to 8 here too). I see several threads about supported dell servers but haven't perused them all just yet. Any help/advice to get this thing started would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you.

Offline Stefano

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Re: Poweredge 2970
« Reply #1 on: January 25, 2010, 04:51:09 PM »
devtay:

if the system is RHEL5 certified then go for SME 8..

Offline devtay

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Re: Poweredge 2970
« Reply #2 on: January 25, 2010, 06:48:58 PM »
if the system is RHEL5 certified then go for SME 8..

Thanks for the advice! Will do.
You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you.

Offline devtay

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Re: Poweredge 2970
« Reply #3 on: February 01, 2010, 09:33:43 PM »
Update here to all who are interested (probably not that many  :-P). Well, I'm still in testing, but this server is a beast. Tried SME 7.4 but only found one of my quad cores (looked in /proc/cpuinfo). Install went like a dream. RAID w/hot swap via PERC/6i controller very slick. Installed 8.0 beta and all four cores found. Pretty stable with 8 (printing, proxy, ibays, etc) but since it's not production, I'm waiting on 8. Going back to 7.4 but thinking about VMWare so I'm not wasting all that proc power. When I put sme7admin on 8.0 beta, I get no data in graphs and no email updates. Need more testing to figure this one out. Since I am going production with this, it's back to 7.4. Can't wait for 8!
You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you.

Offline warren

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Re: Poweredge 2970
« Reply #4 on: February 01, 2010, 09:52:01 PM »
Quote
Update here to all who are interested (probably not that many  :-P).

Devtay, I think all on the forum appreciate any feed-back  :D

All feedback helps us all and makes SME an even more awesome distro  :cool:

Offline Stefano

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Re: Poweredge 2970
« Reply #5 on: February 01, 2010, 10:13:09 PM »
Update here to all who are interested (probably not that many  :-P). Well, I'm still in testing, but this server is a beast. Tried SME 7.4 but only found one of my quad cores (looked in /proc/cpuinfo).

well.. if you want to retry with 7.4, at the first reboot after initial configuration, remember to choose smp kernel and.. et voilĂ , your quad core is fully available ;-)

HTH

Offline CharlieBrady

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Re: Poweredge 2970
« Reply #6 on: February 01, 2010, 10:57:22 PM »
Tried SME 7.4 but only found one of my quad cores (looked in /proc/cpuinfo).

Please report this issue via the bug tracker.

Offline devtay

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Re: Poweredge 2970
« Reply #7 on: February 02, 2010, 12:04:42 AM »
well.. if you want to retry with 7.4, at the first reboot after initial configuration, remember to choose smp kernel and.. et voilĂ , your quad core is fully available ;-)

HTH

Stefano you rock! I figured I missed something. About to try it to see what I can get going. I don't recall ever making a choice there. Will I have to make that choice from here on out or...forget it, I will just give it a shot. Thanks, I really appreciate it.
You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you.

Offline devtay

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Re: Poweredge 2970
« Reply #8 on: February 02, 2010, 12:05:24 AM »
Please report this issue via the bug tracker.

I think Stefano pointed me in the right direction. If I can't get it going, I will post to the bug tracker. Thanks.
You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you.

Offline CharlieBrady

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Re: Poweredge 2970
« Reply #9 on: February 02, 2010, 03:53:03 AM »
I think Stefano pointed me in the right direction. If I can't get it going, I will post to the bug tracker. Thanks.

No, please report to the bug tracker, even if you get it going. It should "just work". If it doesn't, we want the opportunity to fix it.

Offline devtay

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Re: Poweredge 2970
« Reply #10 on: February 02, 2010, 11:54:23 PM »
Update to the Update.

Re-installed 7.4 with the disk and instead of booting, hit a key to go to the select kernel screen. Selected smp as suggested and my quad-core beast is running. All four processors show up in /proc/cpuinfo. Haven't opened a bug on bug tracker just yet. If it is supposed to select the smp kernel automatically, it's a bug. If not, it's just me not RTFM.

Put sme7admin on per the instructions at
http://www.sme-server.de/download/sme7/contribs/sme7admin/HOWTO_install_Sme7admin_on_SME_Server.html

It was working great until I updated via command line with yum --enablerepo=smecontribs. Updates to the hdtemp, sysstat, and others were downloaded. Now no data in the graphs. I'm going to remove sme7admin and reinstall to fix.
You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you.

Offline Stefano

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Re: Poweredge 2970
« Reply #11 on: February 03, 2010, 12:05:28 AM »
It was working great until I updated via command line with yum --enablerepo=smecontribs. Updates to the hdtemp, sysstat, and others were downloaded. Now no data in the graphs. I'm going to remove sme7admin and reinstall to fix.

search bugzilla.. there should be already something about it

Offline CharlieBrady

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Re: Poweredge 2970
« Reply #12 on: February 03, 2010, 12:56:36 AM »
search bugzilla.. there should be already something about it

If not, report your problem in Bugzilla, not here.