ACKserver

Project: ACKserver
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Description	Dell 1855 rackmount servers and a NetApp FAS 3050c with 3 disk cabinets
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Vicarious, Roelke and computer1up got some new servers for the space: a Dell PowerEdge 1855 cabinet with 10 blades and a NetApp FAS 3050c storage applience with 3 disk cabinets, two filled SCSI cabinets and one empty SATA (or maybe SAS?) cabinet.

These are great servers, but they consume a lot of power and make one heck of a noise when powered on. A solution will be needed to be found before we can put these to work. The Dell's are very noisy when the fans are full on, which they are in this configuration: we only have two out of four PSU's.

The NetApp needs some fiber cables and stuff, which weren't included. We also still need one or two switches for the servers.

Dell PowerEdge 1855: One trick to make the fans a lot quieter is to hook up a serial cable (baud rate 115200), and use Racadm to slow them down. Commands to adjust the fan speed:

racadm fanctrl X Where X = [0,1,2,3,4,5] 0 = Quietest 1 = Louder 2 = Even louder 3 = F-16 jet mode 4 = Disable dynamic fan control (what this does is still unclear) 5 = Enable dynamic fan control

(source: http://s.co.tt/2012/01/06/dell-poweredge-18551955-blade-chassis-undocumented-dracmc-commands/ )

Each of the blades has two Ultra 320 SCSI drives in it, configured in RAID 1. They range from 36 to 73GB and from 10K to 15K RPM. A KVM switch is onboard, on the right to the DRAC module. A special cable connects it to VGA, and PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports. There's also a cable to adapt to two USB ports, this one looks similar but not the same as the KVM cable, and goes in the front of each blade, below the power on buttons.

Server hardware configurations: to be added...

NetApp:

To be added...