Can someone Help me learn about Servers.

Spud1200

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As you mite of noticed I have not been on the forums much lately as I've been really tired and for some forsaken reason I have been sleeping only 6 hours per night. So my apologies in advance if this comes across as arrogant or rude jumping in and all most asking for a class on servers in a manor of speaking.

I have three servers hear at home. Two Tower and one Rack. I know very little about them and I have been struggling to get the Rack Server up and running. I will say I know absolutely nothing about this Rack Server and I'm completely unfamiliar with the technology in side of it.

The server I'm wanting to get up and running is the newest of the lot I have. I think its 2008 and its an IBM x 3650 x2, x4 Xeon with 12 GB of Volatile Memory.

Their is so much connectivity on this thing I dont know were to start. I've been looking for some sort of BIOS too boot in too. but can seem to find one.

I was gonna put Linux MInt on it but I'm unsure after poking around if I have to create and array under ServeRAID IBM to recognize the HDD's.

I'm booting the PC as in the Server and I'm getting Broadcom Net Extreme I think. Their is no OS on the System. I currently have 4, 68.3 GB Drives installed.

I have been poking around and I'm completely out my depth with this. Looking at the back of the server it looks very complex. I have a Fibre Card. I'm not even sure of thats meant for Fiber Optic Internet. See I dont know much.

Its also got Remote management and a redundant PSU at 835 W .

What I'm asking is half this stuff in this Server I have no idea what it is and how to fully utilize it proper.

How do I get in too the BIOS and will LM be at least and O.K OS too put on it.

https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=897&letternum=ENUS107-685

This is the manual I found for it.
 
From what I was able to gather online F12 seems to be a pretty consistent button in this server series for getting to the configuration to have it get to the BIOS.

The following was taken from another website that deals with server information.

"The Boot Menu program is a built-in, menu-driven configuration program that you can use to temporarily redefine the first startup device without changing settings in the Configuration/Setup Utility program.

To use the Boot Menu program, complete the following steps:

Turn off the server.
Restart the server.
Press F12.
Select the startup device.
The next time the server is started, it returns to the startup sequence that is set in the Configuration/Setup Utility program"
 
Fibre ports are normally used to connect servers to storage, provides super fast GB connections , not really needed in a home environment.

remote management, im assuming you mean iLO? is basically a separate NIC with IP so you can get remote web-access into the server. its mainly used if there is an issue with the server and cannot get access via the normal network routes.

redundant PSU is as is, is one PSU fails, the other kicks in.

Does your server has a internal USB port? you can install ESXi on a USB stick and run off it, then utilize the HDDs for datastores.

Could RAID the HDDs as well.

ps. Welcome back !! :cool:
 
Fibre ports are normally used to connect servers to storage, provides super fast GB connections , not really needed in a home environment.

remote management, im assuming you mean iLO? is basically a separate NIC with IP so you can get remote web-access into the server. its mainly used if there is an issue with the server and cannot get access via the normal network routes.

redundant PSU is as is, is one PSU fails, the other kicks in.

Does your server has a internal USB port? you can install ESXi on a USB stick and run off it, then utilize the HDDs for datastores.

Could RAID the HDDs as well.

ps. Welcome back !! :cool:

I knew that iLO was Integrated Lights Out but apart from that knew not much about it.

I had to learn the hard way never worked in the IT industry I had to figure out my self to Format the Drives. Initialize the drives and then set up the RAID threw the built in disk management utility. I had a Desktop OS on it the other night but to say with out proper GPU installed it ran like **** . I've downloaded Ubuntu 16 + to install on the server.

The folk over at Linux forums was talking about this computer being a super toaster with x2 Chips at x4 = 8 Xeons and 12 GB of Memory. Its actually a lot quieter than my Desktop running the projector.

I mite install Ubuntu later on it if I can be chewed.
 
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