[rescue] IBM disk FRU (was "Re: playing with the new E250 ... disk performance vs. old PeeCee")

[Dan Duncan]

On 12/20/06, Magnus <magnus at yonderway.com> wrote:
> Don't you have the IBM provided tools installed on your servers?

Nope.  Not deemed feasible at the time they were put into production
and getting approval to add them after the fact and roll them out
to production would be prohibitive.  I did try the audit utility that IBM
provided from their website (I forget the name) and it managed to
hang the network connection on a perfectly good server (the failed drive
was the boot drive in another server) so the whole experience is starting
to sour me on IBM.

I don't like Dell, but they can actually tell you the serial number of the
drive(s) in your server given the server's serial number.  What the hell's
wrong with IBM?  One single character in my car's VIN tells me what
engine it has in it.  Another tells me both where it was made AND what
transmission it has in it.  What's the point of a 16-digit model number
if it doesn't convey useful information about the item?  I know IBM
makes a lot of stuff, but I doubt they've made quadrillions of models.

> Every one of my servers every day emails me its RAID status which
> includes in verbose detail the logical and physical composition of every
> RAID volume.  Just looking at today's report from a randomly selected
> server in my farm, if I knew that SCSI device 0 went tits-up, I have the
> FRU and serial number handy in this report (as well as a lot of other
> info they won't know what to do with).

4 of us support over 1000 servers in production.  We really don't need 1000
additional emails to comb through every day, 1000 extra IP addresses
to manage, etc.  We only have 2 or 3 drive sizes and 2 types (U320 or
2GB FC) so I think I finally have all the FRU data I need now but I wish
IBM was a little more on the ball.  Sometimes I can get the info they
lack with Google but they shouldn't even have to do that.

> This example runs on a RHEL4 host.  If you're running AIX the provided
> tools may be somewhat different but I bet they exist on your support CD.

Nah, this one is RHEL4.