Server Area Questions

If it isn't too much more costly, would it not be easier to have all the ports at 1000baseT (assuming they can fall back to 100TX).

If that would be too much, then I think we could cope with having mixed in banks.

If we are saying that 24 1U commodity servers in a rack, then I only think it's important to have enough ports (remembering that we may want to use both NICs of a machine), I don't particularly care about 24 or 48 port switches.

I think I'd like to see the patch cables routed out the top of the racks and back in the top of the the rack to the switch. NOT under the floor.

Fibre channel in one bank seems fine to me.

-- NeilBrown - 03 Oct 2007

Don't you have anything better to do?

-- CraigStrachan - 03 Oct 2007

It certainly would be easer to have them all the same, but...

A 2900-48G is about £2.9K (+VAT), including its share of a 4-port core switch card. A 2650 is about £470 (+VAT). We may also want to redeploy some existing switches.

-- GeorgeRoss - 03 Oct 2007

Yes, all machines need consoles, unless you can provide a consistent wrapper around those that use lantronix, and those that use IPMI.

Lantronix in banks. No preference to beside switches or not.

-- NeilBrown - 03 Oct 2007

Irrespective of the hardware we use we need a consistent interface and a way to list what host consoles are available. If the same interface could tell you which rack the host you were looking for was on then that'd be ideal. Also whatever hardware solution we go for the cabling should be console server agnostic and it ought to be possible to swap out the console server with the minimum of fuss

-- IainRae - 03 Oct 2007

Certainly some switched outlets would be good. Only needed for those "high priority" services. Don't particularly mind about verticlal or horizontal, but best to have spread out in the rack. ie not all a the bottom of the rack.

-- NeilBrown - 03 Oct 2007