Setup a HP ProLiant Linux server

Again a little reminder for me. 😉

Install CentOS/RHEL 5.x

Update the system with yum update

Reboot

# yum install expect
# yum install libnl
# yum install net-snmp

Download HP System Health Application and Command Line Utilities for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (AMD64/EM64T). You get a file like hp-health-8.6.0.24-25.rhel5.x86_64.rpm. Install this package:

# rpm -ivh /home/locadm/hp-health-8.6.0.24-25.rhel5.x86_64.rpm
# service hp-health start
# service hp-asrd start
# chkconfig hp-health on
# chkconfig hp-asrd on

Download HP SNMP Agents for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (AMD64/EM64T). You get a file like hp-snmp-agents-8.6.0.18-17.rhel5.x86_64.rpm. Install this package:

# rpm -ivh /home/locadm/hp-snmp-agents-8.6.0.18-17.rhel5.x86_64.rpm
# /sbin/hpsnmpconfig
# service hp-snmp-agents start
# chkconfig hp-snmp-agents on

Download HP SmartStart CD x64. You get a file like smartstart-8.60-0-x64.zip. Install this file:

# unzip smartstart-8.60-0-x64.zip
# mount -o loop SS860.2010_0909.41-x64.iso /mnt
# /mnt/autorun

Software -> Install ProLiant Support Pack -> …

Reboot

Modify iptables firewall

# vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables
...
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 2301 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 2381 -j ACCEPT
...
# service iptables restart

Get Multi-path Device Mapper for Linux Software. Go to hp.com -> Support & Drivers -> Download drivers and software (and firmware) -> For product: Linux

Select Multi-path Device Mapper for Linux Software

Select Device Mapper Multipath Enablement Kit for HP StorageWorks Disk Arrays

Download HPDMmultipath-4.4.1.tar.gz

# tar zxvf HPDMmultipath-4.4.1.tar.gz
# cd HPDMmultipath-4.4.1
# ./INSTALL
# reboot

Enable Multipathing

# chkconfig multipathd on
# service multipathd start
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Cyberwar

Do you know all that science fiction movies about cyber war and control over people with computer systems and networks. What about the movie “Enemy of the State” with Will Smith, a complete life was killed by one mouse click. Or the movie “The Net” with Sandra Bullock, a similar situation. It’s scary how real these movies became now. 15 years ago people thought about critical possibilities with computer systems and world wide networks, today these doubts become reality. Look at the security problems with OpenBSD and the trouble around Wikileaks.

I don’t like this immense influence of politics and industries and I have no ideas how I can protect my private life! Stop surfing? Stop paying with credit cards, PayPal, etc.? I’m very afraid…

EVA 5000 replacement

Time to say good bye… My HP StorageWorks EVA 5000 was a big challenge. A few years ago I started this project with one HSV110 controller. Step by step I created my own EVA 5000 with parts that I bought everywhere in the world. 😉 Since two years this system is running in my home lab, but it’s old and slow. I upgraded the system to 56 disks but the performance increase was not as mentioned. I decided to sell the entire system, but there was no buyer. But thank god I had the chance to get a pair of EVA 4000 (HSV200-A) controllers. 😉 Today a big package arrived at home! Lot’s of parts for a big upgrade to an EVA 4000. 😉

Say hello to my new storage system: The HP StorageWorks EVA 4000

hsv200

eva4000-1

eva4000-2

The performance raise is phenomenal. The EVA 4000 is 2-3x faster than the old EVA 5000. I didn’t expect this performance increase. 🙂 That’s absolutely great! I love that new toy… 😉

Oracle Enterprise Linux for SPARC – Is Solaris dead?

Yesterday I received the news that Oracle plans to port their own Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, to SPARC. A pretty cool idea. 🙂 But after talking with a very good friend I’m not sure if this news is a good news.

Why pay lot’s of money for porting a operating system to a new platform? Oracle owns Solaris and everbody knows that’s a proven and stable operating system for SPARC. Lot’s of application and tools are available for Solaris, too. With the upcoming Solaris 11 release you even get more new features that other operating systems cannot offer.
Or think about mission critical systems. With Solaris and Sun Cluster you have rock solid high available system. Many companies running such configurations several years with success.

From an economic perspective it’s not a good decision, too. Oracle have to invest lot’s of money for the SPARC port and then Oracle have to maintain two similar operating systems for the same target. In another words, Oracle pays for developing four operating systems!!! Solaris SPARC and Solaris x86, OEL SPARC and OEL x86.

That’s not the typical Oracle business! Of course, Oracle supports different platforms but do not offer two identical software products.

Is this perhaps the dead of Solaris? Maybe Oracle plans to port everything to Linux and to stop developing on Solaris? What do you think? Feel free to comment!

  • Linux

RHEL alternatives for a new java environment

To add a new alternative for java execute following commands. Current system is CentOS 4.8 x86 Linux.

# alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre/bin/java 100 
--slave /usr/lib/jvm/jre jre /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre 
--slave /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.4.2 jre-1.4.2 /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre 
--slave /usr/bin/rmiregistry rmiregistry /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre/bin/rmiregistry

# alternatives --config java
There are 2 programs which provide 'java'.
 Selection    Command
-----------------------------------------------
*+ 1           /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.4.2-gcj/bin/java
   2           /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre/bin/java

Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number: 2

In case of the IBM JRE you need to override the symbolic links for /usr/bin/java and /usr/bin/rmiregistry. Otherwise the java executives cannot locate required libs under /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre/bin/classic. This is not required for other JREs for example Oracle/Sun JRE.

# ln -s /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre/bin/java /usr/bin/java
# ln -s /opt/IBMJava2-142/jre/bin/rmiregistry /usr/bin/rmiregistry

I modified the /etc/profile and added the environment variable JAVA_HOME.

Done!

I’m a Daddy – Welcome Lina ! :)

On Monday 29.11.2010 at 8:30 o’clock in the morning my sweet little daughter was born. 🙂 I saw her and felt in love immediately. 🙂 She’s sooo nice and so sweet, my little Lina. 🙂 She weights 3kg and is 50cm large… It’s unbelievable, I’m a very proud daddy. 🙂

Hot-swap trays for my HP DL185 storage server

Today my hard disk hot-swap trays arrived. 🙂 Yippiieee… time to complete my storage server. The new hot-swap trays had no labels, so I created them myself. It looks pretty nice!

Next step is getting some more disks and a suitable rackmount-kit. My private datacenter grows and grows. 🙂

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HP Virtual Connect Manager 3.10

Sunday morning I read an interesting article about a VMware installation based on HP BladeSystem with Virtual Connect Flex-10 modules. The article contained lots of screenshots and I saw serveral changes within Virtual Connect Manager. So I decided to upgrade the firmware of my entire HP BladeSystem including the blade servers and interconnect modules.

The update procedure tooks some time but I had no problems. At the end I started the Virtual Connect Manager and I couldn’t believe it! 🙂 HP changed lots of web sites to Adobe Flex! Woooowww… But I cannot understand why HP changed to Adobe Flex? The old HTML only version of Virtual Connect Manager runs fine and had a pretty nice look and feel. The new Adobe Flex based GUI is not 100%. I think HP should change the entire Virtual Connect Manager to Adobe Flex. The current solution is not my preferred implementation. 😉

  • Linux

op5 Network Monitor

At work we decided to implement Nagios as a monitoring tool. A colleague started to install and configure Nagios Core and some add-ons. But I was not really happy with it. Nagios Core is very uncomfortable and complicated and the add-ons are not mature enough for productive usage.  That’s why I decided to search for another solution based on Nagios. After looking for appropriate products I choose op5 (www.op5.com). I started to install and configure op5 at home on a Centos 5.5 i386 based virtual machine. Nagios himself remains complex but op5 make life easier. The most important feature is the web based configuration tool of all Nagios settings. I implemented a small test lab and I was surprised how many Check-Scripts op5 offers. Op5 supports VMware ESX, several HP based SNMP queries, and lots of more. A very nice tool! Below you see the tactical overview of my home lab. 🙂

op5monitor

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