choice of hardware for Ignite server

[Philip Carmo]

Hello,

We are planning to set up an Ignite server, and I'd like to use two low-end workstations, like a B160L or B132L+, to play around and set it all up. We only use HP-UX 11.00 by the way.

My question is if this restricts or complicates the types of images I can install. For instance, if the Ignite server is a Series 700 workstation with a 32 bits PA-RISC 7x00, can I still install a 64 bits version of HP-UX 11.00 on a Series 800 server? Or would I make my life a lot easier if I bought two C200s or B1000s for instance?

I expect it does't matter, but I'd hate to find out later that I was wrong. Thanks in advance for your input.

Andre

[Dan Hetzel]

Hi Andre,

According to the installation manual, any Series 700/800 system running HP-UX 10.0, 10.10, 10.20 or 11.0 could be used as a server.

I never heard about hardware limitations for an Ignite server, apart from the following:
HP-UX 10.30 is not supported on Class B, C, J, or Series 7xx systems.
NFS Diskless functionality is not supported on HP-UX 10.30, 11.0 and later versions.

Best regards,

Dan

[Ovidiu D. Raita]

Like you said: it should work. That image can be downloaded by any client that supports that particular OS version. I double checked with some other fellows too. Never heard of any problem.

Ovidiu

[Patrick Wallek]

Something to keep in mind when setting up an Ignite-UX server is the amount of I/O you will be dealing with.

Some points to consider:

1) Network traffic - you probably DON'T want your Ignite server to be on a 10Mb network.

2) Disk Space - Make sure you have plenty of disk space to store your archives. Depending on the size of vg00, or whatever else you want to back up, I would recommend a minimum of 20-30GB. You will probably need more if you are going to keep very many versions of the archives.

3) The Ignite backups are gzip'ed. The Ignite archive will be compressed using gzip as it is done. The faster the CPU the faster gzip will work and the faster your backup will run. More RAM would probably also improve this.

4) Make sure you have the correct version of gzip. I believe the version you want is 1.2.4a. This is the version that can handle files greater than 2GB. You will also want to make sure that you enable 'largefiles' on the Lvols the Ignite backups are going to be stored on. Again, depending on the size of what you are backing up, you may get files that are larger than 2GB.

5) Make sure you have a facility to backup your ignite server and make sure that it can handle files greater than 2GB.

I hope this helps in your deliberations.

[Patrick Wallek]

Sorry, I missed part of your question -- If you are going to be backing up and installing 11.00 systems, then your server HAS to be running 11.00 as well. Ignite for 11.0 can backup and install both 10.X and 11.0 (both 32 and 64 bit). Ignite for 10.X can only deal with 10.X systems.

[Dan Hetzel]

Patrick,

You're right about the O/S version on the server.

As Andre said: "We only use HP-UX 11.00 by the way." I wasn't even considering 10.20. as an option.

Good point !

Best regards,

Dan

[marc seguin]

I'm using a B180L workstation as my Ignite Server, and it works very well for both 32 and 64 bits.
Of course you need disk space to store the golden images.
But don't worry if your CPU is rather slow, because no compression stuff (gzip) is done on the server. (the golden image is created from another station, isn't it ?)

[Dave Wherry]

My Ignite server is a B132L and from it we installed UX 11.0 on 6 K class servers. All 64 bit. It works fine.
I have a 2GB drive that my Ignite image and patches are all loaded on so the disk requirements are not that large. If you want to do make_net_recovery with this server you will need more disk space. make_net_recovery should be faster and easier to manage than make_recovery tapes. Coincidentally, I will be working with an HP ASE on setting this up later today. It can be run from cron and you do not have to handle tapes.
As for the network card, I'm not sure that you can use 100MB. When you remotely boot the server you are installing, only the 10MB NIC is working until the 100Base-T stuff gets loaded later. During an install that does not load and run until much later. On newer systems like an L or N, maybe the first NIC is 100MB and it will work. It did not on my K's. The NIC on the Core I/O is only 10MB.

We installed 5 K class systems in less than 3 hours using the Ignite server. Patches are very easy to load and manage from that depot. I'll be doing make_net_recovery soon. I highly recommend using all of this.

[Patrick Wallek]

If you are using your Ignite server to do a make_net_recovery of another machine, then yes, gzip is executed on your server. The server is pulling the data across the network to the server, where it is gzip'ed in the image file.

[Philip Carmo]

Thanks everyone for your input. I think I know enough for now.

Andre