[Gllug] Dell Embedded Remote Access (ERA) Cards

[John Hearns]

On Mon, 2005-01-24 at 14:17 +0000, Doug Winter wrote:
> Anyone used these with Linux?  Good/Bad/Awful?  Any experience welcome, 
> since I don't know whether to get them or not.
> 
> And yes I know Real Weasels are better, but they cost an absolute 
> frigging fortune :)
> 
We work a lot with IPMI cards on several types of server on Intel,
Opteron boards and Sun kit.


Small commercial plug - our CMA (Cluster Monitoring Appliance)
interfaces with IPMI can can be used to control devices.

This week I'm working on getting a 514 node dual-Opteron cluster up
and running for a uni in the North East.
I'm sitting at my laptop at home,
and we have remote access to the cluster which is in Livingstone being
assembled and tested.
The nodes are Sun V20x dual Opterons, and each has a Service Processor
card.
I'm running scripts to remotely power off and on groups of nodes,
get software versions, set locate lights etc.
I think the SP cards are the cat's pyjamas and with our CMA appliance
we will offer customers control and management of large clusters,
render farms etc.


I assume these Dell ERA cards are similar.
I can't comment on the quality of their IPMI implementation,
but if you have the choice definitely go for them.

BTW, Suns have the nice feature of daisy-chaining the SPs via two ports
- cuts down cabling and switch ports drastically.



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