Coyote's Blog

Some use workstations as servers. I'm using servers as workstations. Over the years, I've changed computing gear on quite a few occasions. I've been using Tower Servers for the past 5 years and would like to share some tips to help others. But why would anyone want to do that?? - Servers are well integrated systems and are usually seriously designed and tested. - They offer greater expandability (6x3.5" hotswap bays in my previous T410, now 8x3.5" in my T430). - They usually include some kind of Remote Access Card (RAC) which is great for remote'ing in when all else has failed. - I can get tons of server equipment on ebay that will be compatible with that system. - Where else can I get 192Gb of ECC DDR4 RDIMM, dual 6-core Xeons and 8 hotswap bays? Tip #1 : Choose your chassis with care. Not all servers are created equal: - Rack servers are usually thin and noisy (those 8k rpm fans have the job of cool that 2U enclosure). It is n

Introduction Everyone loves SSD's, that's no doubt but when it comes to updating the of-so-very-important firmware things become quite complicated quickly: First, I don't run Windows or OSX on my most important hardware (the hypervisors/workstations). Second, I run most of my SSD's behind an LSI HBA (to benefit from the cache and from the processing power of the LSI card). Here's how I did -without- Windows or OSX and -without- taking my SSD's out of my boxes. A few words of warning This post is not a full "Method Of Procedure" and is very specific. It is -NOT- for the average user and it requires some good Linux knowledge. If things go wrong, it may brick/destroy your SSD, your PC and even your HD TV. It will most likely require to be adapted in most cases unless you have a very similar setup. The purpose of this post is to show that there are alternative ways available and that you do NOT have to tear up your gear only to update firmw

ATTENTION: This playbook is in the process of being fully released on github and may not work as-is. It is also very RHEL-centric although it will likely work on Centos/RDO as well. Please bear with me as I make this more useable. Thank you. Contacts Vincent Cojot Contributors Graeme Gillis Gaetan Trellu Alexandre Maumene Cyril Lopez Gaël Lambert Guillaume coré Description Introduction As of OSP7/OSP8, RHEL OSP uses the tripleo upstream code to deploy Openstack using a minimal (but critical) Openstack called the 'undercloud'. [1] I won't go into the specifics of this kind of deployment but suffice it to say that the most simple OSP setup instantly becomes, well... quite 'convoluted'. At the same time, all of the different subsystems, nodes and endpoints are deployed without alerting, monitoring and graphing, leaving it to the customer to deploy his/her monitoring framework on top of OpenStack. Some simple alerting and mo