BL680c RedHat Enterprise 4 setup

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hey guys,

I would to get some comments on below setup or suggest some other ideas.

Need to setup 20 blades in 5 locations, all locations have the same (4)servers. OS will be installed on internal disks.

Im thinking of installing the first four manualy, create raid1 setup (onboard raid adapter), power down the blades, remove one disk and use these disks to duplicate the OS. All I need to change is hostname/ip.

Am I correct or does anyone have a better idea, we don't need to setup more servers just these 20.

Best regards,
Robert-Jan

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

add on,

I'm also looking at the "HP SmartStart Scripting Toolkit Linux Edition
User Guide", "Booting from a USB drive key"

Anyone who has used this before?

To set up a USB drive key to boot the Toolkit environment:
1. Create a FAT file system. In this example, the USB drive key is /dev/sda:
cd toolkit/
mkdosfs -I /dev/sda
2. Use SYSLINUX to install the ldlinux.sys bootloader:
./boot_files/syslinux /dev/sda
3. Copy the boot and Toolkit files to the USB drive key:
mount /dev/sda /mnt/usbkey/
cp boot_files/syslinux.cfg boot_files/vmlinuz boot_files/initrd.img
/mnt/usbkey/
cp -a scripts/ /mnt/usbkey/
cp -a utilities/ /mnt/usbkey/
cp -a linux_unattend/ /mnt/usbkey/
4. Customize the scripts for your environment:
vi /mnt/usbkey/linux_unattend/rhel4/syslinux-rh.cfg
In the syslinux-rh.cfg file, be sure to modify the sstk_script boot option parameter to refer to your
customized script.
vi /mnt/usbkey/syslinux.cfg
vi /mnt/usbkey/scripts/install_rhel4.sh
Be sure to modify the syslinux.cfg and install_rhel4.sh files to refer to your network server.
5. Copy the bootdisk image from the Red Hat CD:
cp RHEL4-i386-AS-disc1.iso/images/diskboot.img
/mnt/usbkey/linux_unattend/rhel4/
umount /mnt/usbkey/
6. Test the USB boot process:
a. Insert the USB drive key in the server. If the server already has a C drive, change the IPL order to
ensure that the USB drive key boots before the C drive of the primary controller. After the drive
key boots, the syslinux information and a Boot: prompt appears.
b. At the Boot: prompt, press the Enter key. A progress bar and the Toolkit boot messages appear.
After processing is complete, the /custom.sh script on the USB drive key is executed.
The drive key has been successfully prepared.

Best regards,
Robert-Jan

[slydmin]

Got kickstart?

I don't have much experience deploying it in production, although tested it out on some dell poweredges (3). Partitioning disks with LVM has proven to be a challenge.

-s

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi slydmin,

Do I have a kickstart server, NO ... I'm going to try "the remove the mirror disk and rebuild" tomorrow, if it fails it will be kickstart server.....

Thanks for your reply.
Regards,
Robert-Jan