On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Peter Stugepeter@stuge.se wrote:
Ron, I think they saw your minicluster and wanted one of their own.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT8wEgjwr7k
Pretty interesting coreboot prospect too.
//Peter
it's ok. It's what we've been trying to get vendors to build for about 10 years. Things I don't like: BMC (boot maintenance controller, an incredibly bad idea -- I could tell you stories -- kind of like an EC for servers) and IPMI. IPMI is simply awful.
He pointed out that customers do 1:1 virtualization. OK, if you do that, with coreboot, you can boot linux out of flash, with KVM (easy!) using coreboot to get it going. Problem solved, and, since it's linux in there, you don't need the BMC! Save money, save power, save gray hairs since you don't have to put in an ENTIRE SEPARATE NETWORK just for IPMI and BMCs.
So it's a 6 out of 10. Nice hardware, but they did not get nearly aggressive enough on the software side. It could have been so much better!
I used to think it would take vendors about a year (this was in 1999) to get the value of these ideas. Then I thought it would be 10 years. Now I realize it will be longer. Oh well :-) Sooner or later, somebody is going to get it.
ron