OS install on BLp20 Blade

[John Sellars]

Update:
I've modified one of my old network boot disks and am pleased to say it worked first time, but I'm not quite there yet. I need to create a partition on the HDD before I can install the OS, but with a blade I'm not sure how to do this. The servers don't appear to come with SmartStart...

[John Sellars]

I'll answer my own question if nobody minds. The solution is to use a WIndows 98 boot disk. This allows you to create a large Dos32 partition and format it. Doing this and using a network boot disk eventually allows you to get an operating system on to the blade. This kind of config is not for the novice user which is why the recommendation is to use a Deployment Server! Funnily enough the blade I am building is going to be a deployment server, but in my situation I would have needed a deployment server in order that I could build a deployment server - a sort of chicken and egg thing!

If anyone from from HP/Compaq is reading this I would like to stress the importance of having "virtual CD" functionality (the Diagnostic Station is not cheap and should have this functionality as standard)
. It would have made life so much easier! I also think it would be pretty useful to have a whitepaper which describes the manual configuration of a server blade in detail. I got there in the end (after getting a friend to send me a Win98 boot disk), but I feel sorry for customers who have no experience of the network bootdisk approach - you are going to have your work cut out before you get the operating system on to the blade. Aside from that gripe, Blades are definitely the future for servers and Compaq do have a very good design!