Tuesday, 6 April 2010

Intel Modular Server – Tested Hardware and Operating System List – Tested External Storage

For any Intel product, the Tested Hardware and Operating System List (THOL) is the de facto point of reference for component and product compatibility.

If there is a conflict or problem in an Intel based system and the problematic component is _not_ on the THOL, then Intel Support will not be applicable.

Some results from the above search:

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To find the latest THOL for the Intel Modular Server quickly:

Notice that the IMS THOL is the first link:

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The current reason we are digging into the IMS THOL is to verify how we can extend the 14 drive internal storage unit either via the external SAS ports on the Intel Storage Controllers or via iSCSI target to a SAN.

We are looking for additional storage that is also redundant for any cluster based VMs.

The THOL tells us that we have a few options:

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Note the Promise e310sD is a dual controller 2U unit that has 12 drive bays and the e610sD is a dual controller 3U unit that has 16 drive bays.

Intel’s own Storage Server SSR212MC2R is currently the only iSCSI target that is on the above approved list.

The Promise vTrak storage units are quite reasonably priced relative to the additional storage that we are able to access along with the ability to utilize a dual storage path (Multi-Path I/O or MPIO) to ensure storage access redundancy.

This is a screenshot of a page out of the VTrak Ex10s supported configurations with Intel Modular Server (PDF) document:

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So, we have potentially found what we are looking for. Now we need to discover where the IMS specific Promise documents are located as the links within some of the documents are not working at this time.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

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