Changes between Version 14 and Version 15 of Installation/Hardware

Timestamp:

Dec 7, 2012 1:14:17 PM (11 years ago)

Author:

jhickey

Comment:

--

Installation/Hardware

@@ -45 +45 @@
 === Power and Serial Controllers ===
 
-Historically, we have used real power controllers and serial concentrators rather than IPMI.  We are also currently using IPMI, so you can skip on the power and serial controllers if you want.  So far we have been successful using the SuperMicro Nuvoton WPCM450RA0BX found on their MicroCloud systems.  Adding support for other IPMI controllers should not be too bad if they can be made to work with open source IPMI tools that compile on FreeBSD.
+DETER gives researchers full control over their machines.  Having physical control over the power state of the machine is important to recovering from kernel panics, misconfigured machines, or if the PXE boot process goes wrong (remember that DHCP and TFTP are not the most resilient protocols).  The testbed software will attempt to reboot a node via SSH, a special "Ping of Death" packet, and finally by physically turning the machine on and off if it is still unresponsive.
 
-For power controllers, we are using APC 7902 rack PDUs.
+Serial consoles are logged and provide important diagnostic information.  They also allow access to nodes with misconfigured networks and enable kernel debugging.  
+
+Historically, we have used real power controllers and serial concentrators rather than IPMI, but moving forward we hope to use IPMI in place of both.   So far we have been successful using the SuperMicro Nuvoton WPCM450RA0BX found on their MicroCloud systems.  Adding support for other IPMI controllers should not be too bad if they can be made to work with open source IPMI tools that compile on FreeBSD.
+
+For physical power controllers, we are using APC 7902 rack PDUs.
 
 [http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=AP7902 APC 7902 Rack PDU]
 
-For serial controllers, we are using Digi Etherlite models.
+For physical serial controllers, we are using Digi Etherlite models.
 
 [http://www.digi.com/products/serialservers/etherlite.jsp#overview DIGI Etherlite network serial concentrators]