[rescue] E6500/F6800 (was Re: advice on rescuing an e10k)

[Patrick Finnegan]

On Friday 20 October 2006 04:24, Andrew Gaylard wrote:
> On 10/20/06, Ahmed Ewing <aewing at gmail.com> wrote:
> > All domain configuration including NVRAM information is stored on
> > the SSP workstation(s) if a domain is already configured on the
> > frame... but even if
> > they are donating you the SSP(s) too, there's never a guarantee
> > that the disks will survive the transport trip. Get the license
> > keys (a very long hexadecimal string) in writing from the donor, or
> > be prepared to go back to
> > Sun, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars the first time you
> > need to
> > create/recreate a domain.
>
> Does this apply to the E6800 too?

Do you mean an F6800 or an E6500?  In any case, they're completely 
different from the E10k, and don't use an (external) SSP.  The E6500 
works pretty much like any other sun workstation/server (just with a 
lot more processor slots).  You can actually run it off a 15A 120V 
circuit, outside of its rack enclosure.  I've done it before. :)  Just 
make sure it's not fully loaded, and you don't have anything else on 
the circuit at the same time...

The F6800 supports some domains (2 or 4 maybe?), but is an awful machine 
to try and keep running (or at least the ones we have at work are), and 
eats up LOTS of juice.  It uses 4 x 208/240V 30A circuits (which are 
actually 2:1 redundant, you only need 2 circuits).  One of the 5 we've 
got seem to always throw a processor board when they are powered off 
and back on... the processor isn't actually bad, it just gets disabled 
by the firmware, which requires a support call (and a magic string 
typed by the Sun support tech) to fix.  Our senior hardware guy managed 
to wrangle it out of Sun because of the number of problems we've had... 
I'm not sure if it varies by machine (based on serial number) or if 
it's the same for everything.... I guess in the case of failures, 
they're about as reliable as E10k's are. :)

> I've been offered one for free, but again, the costs of
> transportation are considerable...

You can probably get shipping costs lowered quite a bit if you have them 
ship it to you without the rack... just make sure that they ship you 
the key switch module (in the rack) and cable that connects from the 
system to the keyswitch with the system.  Otherwise, it'll be a bit 
hard to turn it on. :)

> If it makes any difference, I'd prefer to go with Linux on it instead
> of Solaris.

I've done that before.  It was my Linux first box with 22-24 processors 
and about the same GB of RAM. :)  I don't remember any specific 
problems with running Linux on it, I think it worked properly

Pat
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