Ovidiu Predescu's Weblog

i think price difference is related with additional service cost. if you get everything yourself, you have to handle everything alone..your suggestion is not really good for corporate IMO.

Hi Ovidiu! Just curious: where are these machines physically hosted?

They're in a remote colocation facility.

At least a few years ago, Sun wouldn't support things like 3rd-party memory. YMMV.

Solaris 10 has some really cool features that you should take a look at.

Thanks for useful info (that stock Kingston CL3
modules work, and that Debian AMD64 is supported).

Solaris is not completely off the radar now, especially since zfs, zones & Co, and OpenSolaris.

Thanks for useful info (that stock Kingston CL3
modules work, and that Debian AMD64 is supported).

Solaris is not completely off the radar now, especially since zfs, zones & Co, and OpenSolaris.

Oh, one thing I forgot to add: consumer drives
are not designed for 24/7/365 operation, and will
fail early. Raptors are definitely enterprise class hardware, and the next best thing is Hitachi (no, really, the Deathstar phase is over, at least for the current crop -- I've ordered me two T7K250s).

While consumer drives will fail early, it's not because they are not designed for 24/7/365 operation. It's because they're designed to fail early. Hence the abortive move to reducing waranty coverage. I always use commodity drives, and expect failures on a 1 year average lifetime. $0.35/GB for SATA consumer storage compared to 4x that for SCSI doesn't leave me much choice either.

What Kingston part did you get ? I'm thinking of getting the KVR400X72C3A/1G which is 1GB 400Mhz DDR ECC CL3 (3-3-3) ? I can't read the kingston part number on the memory link you provided.

In my x2100, I also bought the IPMI module. Unfortunately this IPMI module delivered with the x2100 only contained a single 9-pin cable. You still need to put a 2x25pin cable between the IPMI mobule and the SATA Backplace connector. The documentation for the installation of this element in the x2100 is very poor. BTW the Reference number given in the IPMI mobule is M3289 which is also used by Tyan for thier S2882 SDMC lights-out management.

Erik, the part number of the memory is listed as KVR400X72C3A at pcconnection.com, but this might be their internal one, not Kingston's.

Aminorex, consumer SATA drives have 3-5 years warranty. Some brands and batches fall early. Some don't. My beef with enterprise-level SATA is not failure rate or lack of performace, it's because they're too small.

In regards to IPMI, my module arrived yesterday (no X2100 to go with yet). It's a X801A, a Tyan part and did come with the 2x25 pin cable.

There are some rather good drives rated for continuous duty made by Western Digital and Seagate. I've used both and had very good results. Saying that a drive is rated to fail early is simply silly. They build them to last as long as they can, but heat, usage and anomolies tend to take a few out early ;-).

Hi Ovidius! Thanks for great informations. I want to buy new X2100 without HDD and buy two WD hard drives. Will I need any special cables or connectors? How do I mount hard drives in? There's only hot-plug boxes... Thanks for nice blog! Frank

Frankie, you don't need any cables. The Sun box comes with two hot-swap bays, each with its own SATA connector inside. You attach the drive to the mounting frame provided and slide it inside the machine. Just make sure the outside latch is completely closed, and everything should work just fine.

Thanks for useful info. I order x2100 with slide rails + Kingston 512 MB + 2x Seagate 250 GB. I Hope, that will work :-)

I have a Sun Fire X2100 (with the service processor, using openipmi) now running nicely with Kingston KVR400X72C3A/1G memory (1 GB PC3200 CL3 ECC 184-pin DIMM) and two Hitachi T7K250 drives as RAID 1 (ext3 file system) on Debian AMD64. CentOS 4.2 server x86_64 worked well, too.

I tried Solaris Express (B24) and turned away in disgust. Opensolaris/Solaris Express Community Edition are purportedly much better, but also very bleeding edge.

for the DVD internal drive you need a special cable to connect to the 42-pin connector. Is that included with the Panasonic, or where do you get that from? The slimline DVD drives I've seen have some 50pin ATAPI connector, I haven't found a suitable cable in local stores. Any hints?

The cable is already inside the server, so you don't need to buy another one. I actually bought the drive from Sun, but it was a mistake, I could have gotten a generic slim CD drive.

I was about to order an X2100 to try out, but hit two snags:

- the case is much narrower than standard (16.75"), so it won't fit in my standard 19" rack. I suppose I can just drop it on a shelf...

- more importantly, the Sun sales rep says that hard drive caddies are not included if you don't order hard drives, and he says the caddies aren't available separately. Ovidiu, did you get caddies with your unit, and if not, how'd you mount the drives?

Yes, they come with caddies.. Your rep is a dork. :-)

Regarding the cable for the DVD: I bought the X2100 without a DVD drive, and the cable is not inside the server, just an empty connector. Anyway, the fans are so noisy, I'm moving the box from the office space to the basement, and there I don't need any dvd drive. Will mount it remotely from a more quiet machine.

Two Questions:

Am I to assume I can purchase a bare SATA drive with no cables and it will work?

And, can I boot this system with an external USB 2.0 DVD drive?

Peter,

With the bare SATA drives you don't need any cables, they will fit inside the provided hot-swap bays. I have not tried booting off an external DVD drive.

Is this the same IPMI module from Sun?
http://www.shopblt.com/cgi-bin/shop/shop.cgi?action=Enter&thispage=01200325U0130_BD57225P.shtml&order_id=!ORDERID!
Wonder if I can buy this instead of paying Sun for $150...

Is X2100 SATA-II and NCQ compatible? Should I buy NCQ SATA drives or there is no use?

Can anyone try booting off of an external USB Drive?

We bought five of these, without the internal drive, and are having a hard time installing them. I assumed a modern PC could boot off an external USB drive but I seem sadly mistaken. Our network administratation dept. won't let us run a PXE boot server.

The servers were an educational special; you had to order them as-is, and they were all spec'd without the internal drive.

I was finally able to get the X2100 to boot off of an external USB CD Drive. I had to upgrade to the latest bios release 1.0.7 first in order for this to work. The machines arrived with 1.0.0 installed.

In order to install the BIOS update without an internal drive, I had to follow the instructions in the users guide on how to boot the supplemental CD from a PXE server in Linux.

My co-worker wrote up a nice summary of our x2100 installation horror stories, and I included a summary of how to install the BIOS update quickly over PXE - check out http://www.eecs.cwru.edu/wiki/eecs/x2100

I just bought an x2100 and I'm having a hell of a time find a cable for that DVD drive. I never got one with my server, should I call sun and ask them for it? if its only included with the dvd unit, where else can I get one? One last question, are there sun forums for help with these machines? I love the thing so far, but I'm sure i'll come up against issues in the future.

David, I cannot confirm with your problems with the BIOS and USB. I just rebooted the box to verify the BIOS, it's still at 1.0.0. When I got it some months ago, I found a DELL USB keyboard at a friend, and an old LiteOn external USB DVD drive in my parents' HW 'archive'. Both worked instantly. I booted off the Ubuntu Linux CD, installed Ubuntu, configured bios and linux for serial console, attached it to a console server, and returned both keyboard and DVD drive to the owners. Since then, it runs without any issues. Only the noise level is annyoing.

Jiri, there's a BIOS upgrade (as a burnable .iso) on Sun's site. It fixes USB keyboard problems, and a few other things with Linux, purportedly.
There's now a BIOS option for redirect console over IPMI. I think default user is Admin, and default password is admin -- haven't gotten Tyan's software nor openipmi to work with it yet -- I just can ping the IMPI module, that's all.

We've got now three X2100 systems set to arrive tomorrow, and I will test them with Raptor drive (the 74 and the new 150 GB one) -- I have read elsewhere that they work. Oh, and 500 GB drives purportedly work with the new BIOS.

I have to agree with Jiri somewhat. I started off enormously frustrated because I couldn't get the keyboard or USB cdrom to work reliably. However, after reading some info and playing a little bit, I found a very reliable procedure to get the BIOS up to 1.0.0.7 at which point I did not see the symptoms any longer. I used 2 tips I found to be very helpfull. First, the back upper left usb seems to be more reliable than the rest. (from cwru site) I can't confirm this, however I used it in my process and had very few problems. Next, I found (somewhere, I thought it was here but I can't find it now) the tip that if you have problems with the system recognizing the USB devices to power off and *UNPLUG* the machine for at least one minute. This worked like a charm for me. The very first thing I did after unpowering the machine was to boot (keyboard in front, usb cd in back upper left); hit F8 to go to the boot prompt (perhaps hit F1 if it thinks the boot devices changed); then select cdrom from the boot menu with the image of the X2100 system supplement in the drive. When the supplement boots choose 2 to flash the bios and you're done. Since I am going to be installing debian on these I used a third hint and after the machine restarts from the bios flash, I go into the BIOS screen (F2) and select "set optimized defaults" (??) to allow linux to boot properly. I can't confirm this one either but the source I got it from is reliable (to me at least).

I bought my X2100 about a month ago and had no problems with it to start with until debian began to frequently "kernel panic" (My linux is not so great so i'm guessing that's pretty much a linux bluescreen) Now I am unable to run any sort of OS on the machine at all, CentOS doesn't boot after installing, debian doesn't install, ubuntu live won't start.

However I am still happy with it mainly because of the price, it will work again and in the end I will have gotten a dirt cheap server. I will stick with acer R510s for my more serious applications tho.

Any suggestions/experience on sourcing dual or quadruple ethernet PCI-x cards (preferably Intel) from elsewhere other than Sun? I read somewhere that the two built-in ethernet ports (nVidia and Broadcom) on the X2100 are found wanting.

I found this slim DVD drive, but I don't know if it will work.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827136065#DetailSpecs

FYI the X2100 is being offered for trial starting today (25 May 2006).

Michael

Hello, i just bought a Sun Fire X2100 and it came with a 80GB SATA HD, i know that solaris is preinstalled in the hd, i read it in the manual.
My question is this...

When i boot on the system, everything goes right until i go to the Solaris booting options, i choose the partition 2 the name is Solaris 2, assuming that is the solaris os preinstalled... And it just got stuck up there.

It doesnt do anything... just a blue screen, i tryied to put some commands and nothing comes up.

If anyone have any idea what could be this.
I know this is a noob question, but hey... im learning.

Thanks in advance, and sorry if my english is Bad. Im from Mexico.