[Beowulf] non-proprietary IPMI card?

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006, Erwan Velu wrote:

> I found this product no so easy to use for many reasons :

Well, I found the initial setup to be a bit cumbersome, but after 
you've done it once it's easy...

> 1- the 50pins ribbon cable is not very convinient to use, it takes a lot of 
> place in a 1u rack
> 2- you need to setup another serial cable from the 3291 to the motherboard if 
> you need to access the serial port

Both of these are internal; in a Tyan 19" case they all fit well, 
IMHO. In a 3rd party case, it could be that the cables are a bit 
inconvenient.

> 3- you need to choose the right firmware to match your motherboard. In my 
> case, I was contacting the support to get the good one, this wasn't obvious.

Well, the firmware was either on a CD delivered with the IPMI card or 
on their web/ftp site. I was actually expecting for the company which 
put the node together to do the flash step, but I didn't find it 
complicated after I've found the right sequence of steps (which is 
documented, but not always very clear).

> 4- Once the setup is set, sometimes I'm loosing the ipmi control, so I need 
> to manually poweroff/poweron to get this ipmi card back.

I haven't experienced this... and my nodes are up for some months now.

-- 
Bogdan Costescu

IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu at IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De