So, I finally managed to gather all the bits and pieces together, power cables, ethernet, SVGA connector etc, plugged the thing in, and Jesus H Christ what a din! For a minute, I thought the Dambusters were overhead.

I’m, of course, referring to the new server mentioned in the last post. No wonder people have special rooms for these things, a man could go deaf venturing within 50 yards of it.

Seriously, it sounded like a plane taking off.

Now this is VERY exciting!

I’ve managed to get my grubby little mitts onto an old Sun Microsystems SunFire V60x S1U Server and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it.

Many thoughts are going through my head, not least which (if any) operating system to install on it. Do I go for Windows? If so which flavour? All research leads me to believe its an x86 server (no EMT64 support) so Windows 2008 R2 is out. What about a small footprint Linux server with no X Server? That’d certainly keep the storage space to an optimum…

BSD based system?

Now consider Solaris or OpenSolaris; it is after all a Sun Server, maybe a the SCSI’s would benefit from some ZFS?

However, since I spend so much time playing with virtual machines, it might be an idea not to use it for storage at all (I do after all back up my laptop to a small external HDD). Maybe I should install VMware ESXi on it and be in remote access virtual heaven?

Choices choices choices…

Having had a couple of days to mull this over, I’ve ruled the ESXi server out, as it appears you need to administer it from a Windows based computer. I’m thinking I’ll probably load OpenSolaris onto it and take it from there. If anyone has any other ideas, feel free to comment…

-EDIT-

I’m putting Ubuntu Server Edition onto it. The machine has 8Gb RAM but its (2) Xeon 3.06GHz processors are 32bit only, so I need an OS that’s going to see all the RAM. Ubuntu x86 Server installs a PAE kernel by default so that makes it easier. I can also use it to administer VM’s and set up a basic file server. In the process I’ll learn a hell of a lot about using the command line, as Ubuntu server has no GUI by default.

Full specs for anyone whose interested:

• Intel SR1300 chassis with sliding rackmount kit
• Intel SE7501WV2 Motherboard
• 2 x Intel 3.06Ghz Xeon CPUs. 533 FSB/1M cache for each processor with hyperthreading, appears as 4 virtual CPU’s to Windows,Linux,Solaris
• 8Gb RAM (4x1Gb DDR ECC DIMMS, 2x2Gb DDR ECC DIMMS)
• 2 x PCI-X slots (1 full height,1 low profile)
• 2 x 73Gb U320 SCSI 10k hotpluggable drives
• 2 x Intel 10/100/1000-Mbps Base-T Ethernet ports
• DVD/Floppy (can be replaced with another hotplugable SCSI drive)
• IPMI 1.5 remote management (remote shutdown,restart,monitoring via LAN)

public class HelloWorld
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        System.out.println("Hello, World");
    }
}

Just being clever!

This being the first post, I would like to introduce myself.