Many solutions exist from different vendors to manage different parts of your Dell PowerEdge Blade environment, ranging from monitoring, deployment, patch management, and others. These companies include, Altiris, Microsoft, BMC, LANDesk and others. Come join us in a discussion of how these vendor's products can assist and how best to architect a solution around these choices.

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Chat Transcript

DELL-ScottH joined.
gkeller joined.
DELL-ScottH hey gkeller ! .. how's it going ?
DELL-ScottH Is your first name Greg ? I used to know a Greg Keller in Dallas
DELL-ToddM joined.
DELL-ScottH hey todd
DELL-ToddM Hey Scott
DELL-ToddM What's up gkeller?
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DELL-ToddM I think that the flexaddress chat next week is going to be cool!
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DELL-ToddM Hello iheck
DELL-ScottH yeah, too bad you are on vacation ... you should dial in from the pyramids !
DELL-ToddM Hi Roger
iheck hi
DELL-ScottH hey roger, iheck
Dell-RogerF Greetings
gkeller Howdy All
DELL-ToddM Salutations
gkeller Scott, yes.. it's the formerly Dell Hpcc Greg Keller ;)
DELL-ScottH ahhh
DELL-ScottH how the heck have you been ?
gkeller Pretty good... Busy as can be
DELL-ScottH so who are you with now ?
DELL-ScottH and it's also the former ibm greg keller too, right ?
gkeller R Systems / R People. Selling Hpcc Cycles and support
gkeller Nope, Never Ibm (that would be my parents :) )
DELL-ScottH ahh ok ... hey they wear jeans there too now :-)
gkeller geek is in the Dna I suppose
DELL-ScottH ihekc, how about yourself ? whatcha do, where you from ?
iheck I'm with Dell
iheck Tsr
DELL-ScottH ahh a lurker !
iheck in Mid Market
iheck lol...yup
DELL-ScottH cool, glad to have you
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DELL-ScottH waiting a few minutes to give others a chance to join
DELL-ScottH hey rosalind !
DELL-ScottH how goes it ?
rosalind_bell good Scott, how are you?
DELL-ScottH chillin like a villian
DELL-ScottH just me and matt dillion
rosalind_bell this is my first time on the chat, just join the techcenter last week
DELL-ScottH Great to have you here ... what do you do ?
rosalind_bell My goal is to do more work with Roger moving forward
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DELL-ScottH forward is good
DELL-ScottH hey greg !
ramseyg_dell hello
DELL-ToddM Hey greg
ramseyg_dell Hey Todd - thanks for that info earlier on Hyper-v. .
rosalind_bell My day job.....part of the Global Relationship Marketing Org, my specific role is planning, strategy and programs for relationship business in the Us....
DELL-ScottH omg, we need a "simplify job description" plan :-)
DELL-ToddM Hyper-v is the topic of the day for me - seems to be coming up more and more
DELL-ScottH Well I have to tell everybody, we are going to take the bus off the road today .....
DELL-ScottH we had planned on having some experts from Ms join us for a discussion around Ms System Center and blade deployment, but they had to cancel last minute .....
DELL-ToddM I like going off road
DELL-ScottH so in the spirit of our open discussion format, we want to open it up to Anything you want to talk about
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DELL-ScottH we are always informal on the chats, if you can't tell by now :-)
DELL-ToddM Hey - Kristoffer
Kristoffer Hi guys
DELL-ScottH ramseyg is with Dell It and does some Ms systems center stuff, so he could cover that ...
DELL-ScottH I do a lot of systems managment, and just posted some more blade demos so I could talk about that
DELL-ScottH Todd does a lot on virtualization , he could do that
DELL-ScottH Roger also does systems managment stuff
DELL-ScottH here's the latest blade demos I did -- http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/poweredge+blade+demos
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DELL-ScottH some around idrac and web management
DELL-ScottH lol
DELL-ScottH got one !
DELL-ToddM Opps - You need to right click on links to avoid dropping out of chat
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DELL-ScottH inside joke -- if you click on a link you drop from chat
DELL-ScottH lol
DELL-ScottH got you iheck !
iheck lol
iheck nice
DELL-ToddM It gets everybody at least once
DELL-ScottH you have to right click on the link ... our running joke for noobs
iheck ::blush
DELL-ScottH :-)
iheck can you throw that link up again for the new guy please
DELL-ScottH http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/poweredge+blade+demos -- but you can also click "action" .. "recent room history" ...
DELL-ScottH and all is available in the chat transcripts
DELL-ScottH greg must be writting a novel
iheck thnx
gkeller scheming to take over the world
DELL-ScottH muhahahha
DELL-ToddM kristoffer - How are are the new blades?
gkeller ya...like that
ramseyg_dell :) just tried to wait for a pause in the flow. . .
ramseyg_dell I do have a hot tip if you're using Opsmgr. . .. . . if you're using the Dell Management Pack for Opsmgr 2007 (r-click the link) (http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?fileid=229201 ), Ms has a new hotfix for you.
ramseyg_dell "The Root Management Server (rms) in System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 becomes unstable or unusable after you import Dell Management Pack 3.1" http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=951526
DELL-ScottH I'm ready to see you up in lights with the case study
Kristoffer :)
DELL-ScottH "unstable or unusable" ... that always looks good in writting :-)
Kristoffer They are very nice - I especially like the idrac virtual media and console... works very well when compiling kernels that panic alot
gkeller in practice are there many installations stacking the enet in the blade chassis?
DELL-ScottH I haven't heard of any, but my sample size if very small
DELL-ScottH @kristoffer, what distro are you using ?
Kristoffer Debian, running xen
DELL-ToddM kernel panic isn't good... Glad to hear idrac works great
DELL-ScottH any feedback on the idrac on blades ?
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DELL-ScottH it's kind of a loaded question
Kristoffer have to reset the idrac console once in a while, as it sometimes goes blank screen...
DELL-ScottH but I want to see if you have the same experience as some other cuswtomers and me in the lab
DELL-ToddM Hi Kent
DELL-ScottH hey kent
DELL-KentS Good Afternnon
Kristoffer other than that they work great
gkeller I'm waiting for 1600mhz Fsb before I can seriously consider a blade deployment for anything other than small Poc stuff.
DELL-ScottH gkeller, I'm not a network guru, but what would need stacking .. which apps ... is this hpcc specific thing ?
gkeller nope... Stacking is great for cheapskates like me
gkeller who want to avoid a massive core switch
Kristoffer :)
Kristoffer not me
gkeller and have reasonably little Gbe loads at any instant heading out of the stack
gkeller 20gbe is good enough for a lot of nodes in my world... Ib handles the big stuff.
DELL-ScottH ahhh we all cant afford the cisco 6509 :-)
gkeller not when Ipmi is the primary traffic on it :)
DELL-ScottH still lots of myrinet deployments in Hpcc ?
DELL-ToddM The ethernet switch stacking to save switch swich ports has been one reason to use blades for virtualization
DELL-ScottH or moving to Ib ?
gkeller we have 19 Pc6248's, 2 stacks of 9 with a 10gbe core. Apart from a few bugs now fixed in new firmware it's worked fine.
gkeller 7 was not a lucky number
DELL-ToddM You can eliminate the need for core switch ports for Vmotion if you keep the Vmotion traffic within the blades - for example
DELL-ToddM within the blades chassis!
gkeller with 24/48gb stacking backplane... in or out of the chassis shouldnt matter
DELL-ScottH I'm liking our blades more and more, working with them in the lab, and I can't say much .....
DELL-ScottH but did you notice ....
gkeller unless you have 10's of systems migrating simultaneously
DELL-ScottH that the chassis is kindof broken into "pods" ....
DELL-ScottH of 4 blade units
DELL-ToddM Going back a few minutes - why the need to wait for 1600mhz Fsb? 1333 isn't enough?
DELL-ScottH getting back a little to discussion of "I'm ready for blades when 1600 Mhz Fsb is norm"
gkeller not for Hpcc... many apps are Memory Bandwidth limited
gkeller that's 20% is worth a lot
DELL-ToddM What is currently 1600mhz Fsb?
gkeller Most vendors have it, we are using a Dell Dcs 1U system for now
gkeller but since those are only available in volume, we're pinched.
DELL-ToddM Ah - I understand
gkeller We like the Cabling reduction on the Blade Chassis.... but a premium price for a performance penalty makes it hard to justify.
gkeller For typical Ms and App servers it isn't as important.
DELL-ScottH chassis will come down in price , then might be option for you
DELL-ToddM Does Amd Hypertransport perform better?
gkeller but my scientists feel it.
DELL-ToddM for these Hpcc workloads?
DELL-ScottH yeah, hows the Hpcc world now wrt amd and intel
gkeller Yes but no on Amd... Barcelona's still got some warts... and pre-barcelona couldn't keep up with intel's 4 Flops per cycle
gkeller Don't get me wrong... Barcelona has some strong advantages but they freaked folks out with their stumble out of the gate
DELL-ScottH what's the thoughts on dunnington with 6 cores ? -- in wikipedia, I'm not leaking anything :-)
gkeller The trick is all in the Memory Bw and Cache config
gkeller our Current Quad Cores, we only use 1 core per pair and idle the other
gkeller if we use them both, the cache get's clobbered so bad it's a net performance loss.
DELL-ScottH ahh , right
gkeller Wolfdale/cloverton didn't have the same cache problem... probably because it had less cache
gkeller but the Memory Bw per socket doesn't change. So we could use 3 of the 6 possibly
DELL-ScottH I think those had nonshared cache, the later revs went to shared cache model
gkeller the cache is shared in pairs on Intel
gkeller Amd has it shared accross all 4 which is technically beautiful, but may not be great for me.
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gkeller I'm curious what the bare-metal Mac capture options are on the Blades
DELL-ScottH anybody else have questions across topics ? -- jump in, dive in, ...
gkeller on 9G Drac would hand out a formated list (if you could wait 3 minutes for it )
DELL-ScottH I can test that, I've got a chassis, I'm sure some omreport command will dump them
gkeller Does Idrac have a similar table or would we have to collect it from the Enet switch?
gkeller ya, but Omreport would have to pull from the Idrac directly, I need it bare metal.
DELL-ScottH let me see what I get at the chassis level
gkeller What's the real story on Power... what's the minimum number of supply's to have redundancy on a fully loaded chassis.
gkeller (I keep hearing different counts)
DELL-ScottH telnet/ssh to chassis -- type getmacaddress
gkeller ok, so the same command exists.
DELL-ScottH $ getmacaddress <name> <BMC Mac Address> <nic1 Mac Address> <nic2 Mac Address> chassis N/a 00:1a:a0:ff:f6:c0 00:1a:a0:ff:f6:c1 server-1 00:1c:23:cc:56:3d 00:1c:23:cc:56:39 00:1c:23:cc:56:3b server-2 00:1c:23:cc:56:42 00:1c:23:cc:56:3e 00:1c:23:cc:56:40 server-3 00:18:8b:ff:40:c0 00:1a:a0:ff:d7:e4 00:1a:a0:ff:d7:e6 server-4 00:18:8b:ff:42:28 00:18:8b:ff:9d:ea 00:18:8b:ff:9d:ec
gkeller can racadm pull it
gkeller ?
DELL-ScottH nice how the smileys came across
DELL-ScottH that's from me just running it
gkeller We script it so the Db is automagically updated.
gkeller racadm will pull it too then I'm sure
gkeller Thx
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DELL-ScottH yes, works, just run same command through racadm
DELL-ScottH just tested it
DELL-ScottH diff levels of redundany for the chassis
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DELL-ScottH Ac redundany level requires all 6
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DELL-ScottH power supply redundancy can do with 4
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DELL-ScottH must be java problems
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DELL-ScottH what else is on anyones mind ?
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DELL-ScottH We're leaked some info on the site, anyone found it yet ?
DELL-ScottH There's a new feature in the blade chassis announcing in a few weeks, but we already posted some info on it
DELL-ScottH Todd you don't count, no shirt for you
DELL-ToddM If you "flex" yourself a bit - you will probably find it
DELL-ScottH groan !
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DELL-ToddM ::wink
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DELL-ScottH check out the topic for next week's chat and you'll find a doc attached to the page
DELL-ScottH we'll have experts on next week to discuss it, even though it's not formally announced .... I'm inviting my mother to the chat for that week !
Kristoffer :) sounds nice
DELL-ScottH kristoffer, I'm assuming no issues with your chassis yet ?
Kristoffer nope, not yet.. running happily on one powersupply right now... ;)
DELL-ScottH how many blades ?
Kristoffer only 3 powered on... ::huh
DELL-ScottH how are you going to get to world domination with only 3 blades ? ::laugh
Kristoffer I'm still waiting for the redundant chassis which will be loadbalancer/firewall, so not really in production yet...
DELL-ScottH that's why you are compiling so many iterations of the kernel !
Kristoffer of course word domination... maybe I'll tour a bit in the Us as well
Kristoffer or world :)
gkeller if they're like Blade in the movie, I'm backing him with 3.
DELL-ScottH word domination would be Scrabble
Kristoffer haha
DELL-ToddM Wasnt' Kris Kristoffersen in the blades movies?
DELL-ScottH hahahahaha Lol
DELL-ScottH good one
Kristoffer that could have been me...
Kristoffer I'm not singing so well though...
DELL-ToddM That's what I was thinking.....
Kristoffer but neither is he
Kristoffer ;)
DELL-ScottH Convoy ... now that dates me
DELL-ToddM Very true
Kristoffer sure... convoys of blades
DELL-ScottH http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077369/
DELL-ScottH 1978
DELL-ScottH I was 9 .... my dad's favorite movie
DELL-ScottH that and Terminator
DELL-ScottH all right ... what other It topics do we have, it always seems to degenerate at the end of the hour
DELL-ScottH Be sure to join us next week for the "sneak" peek new blade feature ... Roger is running the show .. .todd is being kidnapped by his wife, and I'm trekking off into the woods to get lost
DELL-ToddM How about a shameless plug for my blog - http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/virtualization+frontier - Latest entry is on support of Ms in Vmware Vms
DELL-ScottH thanks to Everyone for being part of the Techcenter .... we appreciate You ! .. tell your friends to join
DELL-ScottH please paypal me $10 for shameless plug of your blog during my chat
DELL-ToddM The check is in the mail
DELL-ScottH (bounce bounce)
DELL-ScottH see you all next week
Dell-RogerF Bye
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DELL-ToddM Thanks Scott
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DELL-ScottH thanks everyone
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Stuart : )
DELL-ScottH you got to be kidding me !
Stuart I guess i am late
DELL-ScottH about 1.5 hours
DELL-ScottH what time is it there ?
DELL-ScottH still working on your migration ?
Stuart hehe... 7:30am over here so I just started work..
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Stuart Well..... the licence for the application on this server uses the Nic Mac address as a reference... so I am still trying to work out if I can Vm it.... I found an option to set a manual Mac address within the Vm settings... I will be testing this today/tomorrw...
DELL-ScottH ahh so trying to keep the old licenses and just put the old mac of the server to the new Vm ?
Stuart The default Mac address setting on our Vms is "automatic".... not sure what that means really.... we will re-licence the app, so that is not an issue... I am just unsure what will happen when we Vmotion the Vm to another host... I hope the manual setting means that the mac address will follow the Vm
DELL-ScottH sounds def like something to test, let us know your findings
Stuart The other issue is that the vendor is complaining about the use of Vms... but we are telling them to naf off.... the guys was trying to say the Vms aren't as "dependable" as seperate hardware devices... but he is wrong.... I think the vendor is about 8years behind the times... :)
DELL-ScottH at least 8 years, I mean comon, this stuff is about to be used by my mother
DELL-ScottH dependable ... haha, it's software that always causes the crashes !
DELL-ScottH have a great day, see you next week maybe
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Stuart bye everyone :)
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