| Ably
assisted by a PowerPoint presentation, Chris gave us a brief resumé
of his role within the IBM organization. Chris works on the higher
ranges of IBM X series servers (those with 4 + CPUs inside) and
gives front line engineering support to businesses and field service
engineers. Being based at home, he just happened to have a couple
of servers lying around in his garage.
So
what is a Server? Chris explained that a server is basically a
big PC with numerous enhancements. They tend to have a lot of
redundancy to override component failure. They have advanced diagnostic
routines including IBM’s latest support tool in the guise
of the Remote Supervisor Adapter and the ability to remotely manage
the server including reboots, firmware and configuration changes,
does Chris really have to get out of bed to go to work? They also
have the ability to run more than one program for more than one
user.
Chris then went on to explain that you do not even need to have
a hardware server anymore and gave us a brief demo of the new
IBM VM (virtual memory) software. VM software comes in three versions
– the ESX Server package is an operating system in its own
right and is loosely based on Red Hat Linux and is designed to
run multi instances of server operating systems. The GSX server
package is an application that runs under Windows/Linux server
operating systems and is, again designed to run multi instances
of server operating systems. Finally the Workstation is an application
that runs under a workstation/server operating system and is designed
to run low-end workstation and server operating systems. Chris’s
demonstration showed a system running Windows 2000 Professional
and DOS on the same system.
Now
was our chance to see inside a couple of these beasts. As Chris
explained earlier, there is a lot of redundancy built into these
machines to ensure continued operation. These included RAID configurations
of hard drives, spare cooling fans and power supply units. Chris
also explained the diagnostics built into the machine which would
pinpoint the faulty component to the end user or field engineer.
Chris then went on to prove his point by disconnecting some of
the components and the server remained fully on line.
The
Remote Supervisor Adaptor which now comes as an optional extra
is a stand alone card that sits in one of the many PCI slots.
This a very sophisticated diagnostics card that continues to monitor
the server’s performance, maintaining diagnostic logs and
will even, if set up, email IBM about the server’s current
status. Finally Chris showed us slides of the some of the latest
servers on the market including the popular BladeCentre models.
Our thanks to Chris for a very interesting and informative evening.
Dave
Robb |
