IBM Series x3455 Servers

Hi! Many of you might be wondering why i was hardly online since the past few days. The reason was this I was setting up 3 IBM Series x3455 servers for my company CSC. These are blade servers which are supposed to run Sourceforge Enterprise Edition have the following configuration:

• 2 x AMD Opteron 2.6 GHz Dual Core 64 bit processors (that’s 4 cores with 2.6 Ghz per core)
• 4 GB DDR2 667 Mhz RAM (ECC RAM)
• 2 x 160 GB SATA II HDDs
• 2 x 1GBps LAN cards

The servers came from Singapore with every component in a separate box! So they had to be assembled first over here. After assembling, RedHat Enterprise Linux v4 was chosen as the OS with the following partitioning scheme:

• /boot – 400 MB
• swap – 8 GB
• / – Left available space

The partitions are over LVM so that the “/” partition can span both the 160 GB disks. Since the software package (Sourceforge Enterprise Edition) was supposed to be installed over an SSH account over the internet from the US, i had to stay up in office all night to assist them. The servers were connected to each other via a HUB and one of the servers was on a DSL link to the internet with its own static IP.

All in all, it was a WONDERFUL experience setting up these servers and i would really like to thank CSC for giving me the opportunity to set up these servers and trusting me on this one

The first server, while installing RHEL (You can see the CDs lying above the server)

The second server.

The POST screen.

Temporary arrangement of servers. Just before we left office at 5:00 AM You can see the hub on top of the 3rd server. The server which has a direct connection to the internet is at the bottom. Heh.. We had to put those post-it notes so that no body disturbs them

This is the video we made while booting the server! Notice the sound?