Re: Netfinity Info

[Al Pilato <apilato@paonline.com>]

Daniel E. Markle wrote:

> I was wandering over the entries at the Free Software Bazaar Page and noticed
> the folowing:
>
>           The NetFinity (and PC Server 330) servers from IBM are becoming
>           increasingly popular, and unfortunately Linux can't be installed in
>           these machines - at least using the ServeRAID adapter on-board
>           available on them - because there isn't a driver for it. I've looked
>           over the entire IBM site to find out if there wasn't source code for
>           the adapter (as it happened with the IBM LanStreamer Ethernet
>           Adapter), to no avail.
>
>           (I know that I could build a software RAID system with the
>           on-board Adaptec adapter. In the NetFinity case, however, this
>           leads to 2 problems: 1) physical installation - normally these
>           systems come with a bay where you insert your HD's and this
>           limits the available space to normal drives, and the bay cannot be
>           used with any controller except ServeRAID itself.

This wouldn't work for level of high availability that we need.



> Praise IBM. ;-P
>           2) I would lose the capability of Hot-Swapping a dead HD because
>           of the problems described in 1).)
>
> Al, would this be problem for us if we got that server?
>

A NetFinity rep was in @ work and said they were in the process of testing the
RAID drivers, and
with Compaq releasing theirs recently, I bet it'll be any day they're released.

Keeping fingers crossed.    :)






>
> --
>
> -------------------
> Daniel E. Markle
> syntax@ashtech.net
>
> Linux - The OS of the future.
> Windows - Still using that legacy OS?
> -------------------