Debian operating system - VC FlexFabric

[chuckk281]

Ramu had a Linux OS question and supporting drivers for VC FlexFabric:

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A customer has DL380G6 servers installed with BOSS Linux operating system (this is a derived from Debian Linux). Even though this OS is not supported/certified on ProLiant it is working fine.

He has seen recently our Virtual Connect FlexFabric presentation and wants to migrate to BL460G7 with VC FlexFabric. The question is will there be any issues when implementing VC FlexFabric in this combination?.

Any one has implemented VC FF with Debian Linux and what is the feedback?.

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David had some insites when he had similar questions:

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… in general the NIC drivers we provide for RHEL/SLES are open source and available in the upstream kernel.  Thus they are also available in the community OSs like Debian.  We do provide Debian support through the currently available Debian Carepack that a customer can purchase.  Our standard statements (without Debian carepack) is that HP provides support of the hardware, but software and OS support is provided by the community.  HP does some basic testing of the OSs with our servers and provides a Debian PSP with mgmt agents, tools and utils (no drivers, since drivers are in distro) on an “as is” basis.

One thing to keep in mind is that because HP has started to put “bleeding edge” NICs into our systems, getting drivers into the distro early enough has been a major challenge.  What we have seen is that the driver developers are going to the last minute just to get them into RHEL/SLES distros.  So if a customer is using an older version of Debian with our latest servers, drivers will not be available and the customer will have issues.  If we have the details of this particular situation, we can comment on what is actually available.

How we handle Debian and the other community OSs is:

• When a new server is released:
  • RHEL/SLES are fully qualified and a PSP is released, either at server launch or within 30 days.
  • We then build the PSPs for the community OSs and start the testing process of those OSs on the new servers (subset based on server family).  In order for the server to be tested, the driver must be in distro.  This testing is done by SIOS in a serial process, due to limited resources, so it can take up to 6-8 months to get tested

• When a new version of the OS is released

We build a community OS PSP for that OS and it is tested against existing servers (subset based on server family).  Again drivers must be in distro, but this is typically not a problem with existing servers. This testing is done by SIOS in a serial process, due to limited resources, so it can take from 2-8 months to get tested.

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Comments or other questions?