[HCoop-Discuss] Migration Status

[Clinton Ebadi]

Greetings,the

Since Peer1 is raising prices in October and no one else has volunteered
a physical location to colocate machines I have begun contacting
colocation providers. The current status can be viewed at [0]. As quotes
come in I will be posting summaries of the offers on the wiki, and from
there bpt and I can schedule onsite visits for the ones we agree are
acceptable.

Additionally Richard Darst and I have written up semi-concrete plans for
hardware expansion [1]. Comments on this are greatly appreciated
(especially from docelic). This is where I am now asking for help on a
few issues.

Does anyone have experience with console servers? We are looking for a
unit that costs less than $500 (ideally; perhaps $800 could be the
absolute limit) that will give us serial console and remote power
cycling ability. All of our new hardware will support IPMI 2.0 and
Serial-over-LAN and so I /think/ we need a box that can:

 * Coexist on two vlans (public and ipmi traffic only)
 * Issue IPMI power commands to an arbitrary number of machines
 * Access the serial consoles of an arbitrary number of machines using
   Serial-over-LAN

If anyone has experience in this area please help! It looks like the
OpenGear boxes listed on the wiki will be suitable, but I am unsure and
want to avoid an "oh ... <<redacted>>" moment after procuring the
hardware.

If it helps I am envisioning our network topology consisting of a public
vlan and a vlan that only the console server and server BMCs can attach
to (using protocol based filtering to isolate IPMI).

Additionally, if anyone has experience with rack mounted switches
assistance with finding a good one would be appreciated. I am going to
look for a Nortel switch, but only because we had one before and it
seemed fine (not a particularly good metric).

Any comments on our hardware choices in general (or alternative hardware
price quotes) are welcome. And, of course, any objections to this entire
plan.

[0] http://wiki.hcoop.net/ProspectiveHostsQuoteRequest2009/PotentialHosts
[1] http://wiki.hcoop.net/HardwareUpgrade2009

-- 
Jessie: i thought your beard took the oxygen from the air and made it
        breathable for you