Monday, April 20, 2009

I see in my future...

Fixing recurring problems, working on new storage implementation, and ordering/configuration of new networking gear.

I'm getting ready to build out our "beta" site, as in, secondary, behind the currently-live "alpha" site. The 10 blades are mostly configured (and since they take 208v electricity, they're as configured as they're going to get until the rack gets turned up). I've got the AX4-5 to partition as well. I remember the procedure pretty well from the alpha config. We were very lucky to be able to get the same piece of kit for both sites. We had been looking at AoE and iSCSI, but CDW sold us the AX4-5 for considerably less than Dell was asking. And the front bezel is prettier to boot.

I'm also going to need to pick up a couple of Ciscos. Since my networking needs are light, I prefer to get refurbished routers. I'll be needing two fast ethernet ports, to 2621's will be perfect.

The recurring problem is sort of interesting. Every once in a while, the host will stop responding to packets. My kneejerk response was 'bad network cable', but the machine has two bonded interfaces. One bad cable wouldn't cause that, and nothing else on the switch is experiencing the same symptoms. I'm going to head into the colocation to try and figure out what's going on. If the resolution is at all unique, I'll post about it here.