Part 1 - The Well Tempered Hacker: Supermicro AMD Hardware with Xen Linux Virtual Machines

In this episode we take a look at a dual AMD Supermicro machine with 32 Gigs of RAM and 9 hard drives. We create a RAID5 volume in software with 8 1TB drives and use LVM to slice that into logical volumes for xen virtual machines. We also take a look at the remote management capabilities of the system and see how you would rarely need to be near this machine to manage it!

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Well Tempered Hacker
• Xen
• Supermicro
• AMD
• Vritual Machines
• computer
• tutorial
• installation
• software

[anders94]

Followup note on the GRUB setup, these days I'd go without the 9th disk and use GRUB 2 with it's ability to compile in LSI drivers and load lvm and raid support modules. This makes it so GRUB can read the slightly non-standard "lvm on top of software raid" configuration we have here and boot the system without the 9th drive - a single point of failure.

[anders94]

leatwix: Breaking a software mirror and booting independently would also work in a software mirror setup.

Another way to think of it is because the software in software RAID5 is openly available and free, getting any old system up and running to read the drive is easier than finding a system with exactly the right hardware controller. I argue that having RAID implemented in software rather than hardware leaves you in a more compatible position should disaster strike.

[anders94]

Lil306: I happen to be using Gentoo but wouldn't advise that as a first step into Linux. You might look into Ubuntu as a good segue. It is a little more window manager oriented but you can still get under the hood quite easily. That'll get you started.

IPMI is the only way to go in the server world, I agree. You can throw the hardware in a closet and forget about it unless something physical breaks.

I've played with a number of Tyan boards- they are quite good and reasonably priced. Good call.

[anders94]

Well, the case is enormous and anything but light although you can easily get in there and there are lots of drive bays. Its also rack mountable I believe. From that standpoint, I love it.

[anders94]

Two reasons primarily: I'm cheap - didn't want to pay for the LSI key which unlocks it - and software RAID is much more compatible than any one vendor's flavor in the event of hardware loss. If my machine crashes and burns, there are literally millions of linux machines out there that I can plug my disks into and get my data back. I realize software RAID doesn't give you quite the speed of hardware RAID but the proprietary tradeoff isn't worth it IMHO. Great question.

[linagee]

Using LVM on top of Linux software raid is not that unorthodox.

[leatwix]

Software RAID5... EEK!

I would have lost some drive space and gone with hardware mirroring. At least if everything breaks, you can literally remove any drive independently, put it in another system and get everything back without using special software.

Great looking server though.

[lesleyhenriquez]

This gives me a stiffy.

[RtSROFLhacks]

Ummmm........

[Lil306]

What Linux are you using as I understand they're are a few variants. I'm primarily a Windows user but trying to get into understanding *NIX environments for Web Hosting services rather than paying Microsoft SPLA fees. I have SUSE Linux, but I've also heard of Gnome, Debian and a fair few others.

I agree those Supermicros take forever to boot, a lot of people mention that. Their plus point is the IPMI. I'm looking at an Asus or Tyan M/B myself for Triple Channel RAM (ECC-R support)

[dongiea]

How do you like that case? I'm thinking of purchasing it for my workstation.