Prune’s Blog

We had our first Sun Netra x4200 M2, which is the new release of x4200. Netra means it is nore robust than SunFire, and is designed to comply to the US Army specs.

I had to put some PCI cards in it. One of the main feature of the M2 version is to support 3 full size PCI (PCI-X) cards. You can also have 2 PCI-Express cards. You will find in below the “extension board” inside the server. When you open the server, the top board slides to the back of the server. Then you can access the PCI-E and the RAM slots (under the white cover at the front). This is quite funny to see on a server but the 3 flat cables used to connect this IO board to the motherboard seems week. Don’t play too much with it.

The front fan module also seems to be a little bit lazy. Maybe it won’t move once the top is closed…

On the front you will see the DVD rom and 2 hotswap SAS disks.

The main problem we had concerns the PCI-X slots. As you’ll see in next pictures, there is nothing to “lock” the card once in place. When I say nothing i’m wrong. You have the small green plastic thing you can move  from “open” to “close”. The only problem is that even on the close position they are damn too small to reach the edge of the PCI card.

Only the PCI on the right (when looking from the top, like on pictures) have a locking system, a screw to put from the outside.

I think I will open a case at Sun about this issue. I may also open a case about the shitty rackmount they give with it : instead of the clean rackmount of the T2000, with a slider for cables at the back, it’s a “do it yourself” old russian way rackmount. You get a heavy package with metal parts hidden in it and a thousands screw bag. No docs !
Hopefully with a 15 mins searching on Sun’s website you can find the x4200 rackmount doc. You will then learn you need to use the M4, M5 and M6 screw. Looking to the paper packaged inside the screwbag, you will see that you have 4 types of M4, 4 of M5 and as many as M6. You choose
I spent some time last week, moving T2000 from one room to another, taking about 15 mins a server, unmounting to remounting.
It took me half a day for 2 x4200… and the backside of the rack if a mess with cables everywhere.
Ooops, I forgot : once in the rackmount, there is no locking facility. Be carefull when you plug cables at the back as your new x4200 may jump out ou crash to the front door (you have a locking system when you take the x4200 out).

Pictures of the rackmount to come.
X4200 is an AMD based host so it have an ILOM. You can get the console using the remote display tool which is a java JNLP application. We had issue here when using it on OsX. On my host for example, I have a SSL key problem which disallow me to use it. I had to use another osX… If you have any info on that I can provide the error code.

Whatever, once started I see no differences between this and the past one.
The new challenge will to have QFS working on Linux (Ubuntu).