Dell XS11-VX8 AKA Fortuna

[Peter Stuge]

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

[ron minnich]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Peter Stuge 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