New to Servers

[Ashley Hathaway]

As the title suggests I am completely new to servers. I am starting my placement soon and will be working with servers so I have purchased a hp proliant ML350 G5 server to play around with and familiarise myself with. The question is where to start? There is no OS installed so I am thinking about putting a distro of some linux server on there.
Anyone point me in the right direction.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Nice server to start with! Old...but features are still what are used today.
Hopefully you got a bunch of hard drives with it, hot swap, a good RAID controller, and a decent amount of RAM.

Learn a few things....
*Depending on the amount of drives, in the BIOS RAID manager, learn how to build RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10, etc.
*Install a Windows Server OS direct on it..play around. Download and install HP's management tools...such as the RAID management utility. Pull one of the hot swap drives..see what the RAID manager does, and how to put a fresh drive in and restore the RAID array...all while the server is running!
*Install VMWare ESXi on it...and learn how to install virtual guests and manage them
*Install Microsoft Hyper-V on it...and learn how to install virtual guests and manage them.

Along with virtualization and the ability to install many instances (guests)....on the server guest, promote it to a domain controller. Built another guest with a Windows desktop OS like Win7Pro...and learn how to join the domain you built on the server guest instance (which is now a domain controller)

Learn the hardware, hot swap power supplies? Multiple NICs?

 

[BlackLabTechs]

Best advice I can give is build it, break it, fix it - repeat. Try windows, hyper-v, VMWare, linux, whatever it is you want to have some experience with. Configure RAID 0,1,5,10 etc. drives. Pull one out while it's running. Rebuild the drive. Setup hot-swap drive. Do a backup and perform a bare metal restore.

Play with any management software/hardware that's included.

IMO - you can never have enough experience with servers. You want to make yourself comfortable enough so that when you walk in on one that has a failed hard drive you know exactly what to do. There's obviously more to learn than hard drive failures but this will get you started.

 

[OaksLabs]

I used Xen Server from Citrix (it is an OS, like Hyper-V or ESXi) to start with servers. It's graphical for the most part, and it has a command line if you want to get nitty gritty.

If the system has two NICs, I'd also recommend installing Untangle (firewall with linux based OS). If you use it as your main router and try out all the features you'll learn lots.

 

[Ashley Hathaway]

Cheers guys, It seems i have a lot to learn, My server has hot swappable bays so i will have to get some more HDD's. it has two hot swappable power supplies and has multiple 5.25 inch bays. it has two Ethernet ports, one is a standard port and the other is labeled as iLO2. I need to get some more ram as it hasn't got very much. I really need to start with the basics as i havent ever played with servers before.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Plenty of used server parts online warehouses...so you can pick up parts cheap.

iLO is a remote management port....you give it an IP address, hit it with your browser...and can get to various hardware functions...and if you license it (costs money)...can get to a lot more features, even remote console of the host OS. Create for building/deploying a server remotely...requires no hands on. Even hardware power cycling remotely.

Dell has a similar thing (although IMO not as good as HPs)...called iDRAC.

 

[Ashley Hathaway]

Cheers, It certianly seems like a function I would need to use. I have had a good look inside, taken it all apart and put it back together today so i know the anatomy of the server. There are a couple of parts in there that i have never seen/heard of before. one appears to be a 3.6v battery pack of some kind and the other i have no idea but has a massive heatsink on it. they both slot into the motherboard but not where the pci ports are. Anyone care to enlighten me as to what they are for.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Without seeing pics....the battery pack is likely the battery back cache for the RAID controller (allows it to quickly write/save live data to the HDDs in case of power loss...one of the reasons you can pull the power cords from HP's servers causing rude shutdowns many times in a row and have good faith they will boot up just fine). I have a couple of spare ones in our stock shelf. The other may be a the voltage regulator for the CPU. If you have 1 CPU...you'll have one of those..when you get a second CPU you need another one of those.

 

[Ashley Hathaway]

There is only one slot for it and I have two CPU's. after a bit of research i have found a picture of it. (here) it is a power regulator. This is the battery (here).
Am i being dumb here, im trying to install an os but it wants to put it on one of the hot swap drives, It cannot find the other HDD i put in and plugged into the only sata port on the mother board. I have also put in two spare optical drives that i had kicking around and that is plugged into the ide port

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yup that's the Voltage Regulator Module (VRM)....
Certain ones for certain CPUs...

And that's the replaceable battery back for the RAID controller....depending on the controller can have one or two of those...they snap/slide off the board and you slide/snap in a new one.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

As for your hard drive setup...can't see from over here....but exactly what do you have for drives physically installed? And can you find what RAID controller you have?

During bootup, you'll see an F-8 prompt to get into the ORCA...Option ROM Configuration for Arrays.
It's a BIOS setup for managing your drives and RAID volumes. I'd reset to default..and then build fresh...but depends on what you have for drives in there. (Hoping you have a decent RAID controller and SCSI or SAS drives)

 

[Ashley Hathaway]

well i can tell you it has two in tel core zeon quad core processors running at 2.5ghz with one ghz of pc2-5300 (ddr2 667socket) ram. It has two hot swappable HDD's in (can have up to six) both 76GB SAS Drives and i have also installed a 1TB SATA drive that i have plugged directly into the main board.
It has a Hp Smart Array E200i controller (no idea what that is) if that is any help to you?

EDIT:
It has a HP Smart Array E200i/128 BBWC Controller (RAID 0/1/1+0/5)

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Go into the BIOS and change your boot order...RAID controller should be in front of SATA. Some models you had to enable the RAID controller as a bootable device.

 

[Ashley Hathaway]

In boot controller order it has the E200 smart array listed first then the IDE, no SATA is listed. in the standard boot order (IPL) it is listed in the following order:
cdrom
floppy drive (not that i have one on here)
hard drive C:
usb drive key C:
pci embedded hp NC373i Multifunction Gigabit Adapter Port 1

If it is any help this video shows the bios but obviously not the same settings

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Have a RAID volume created on the controller? If not..there is technically no "C drive" yet.

 

[Ashley Hathaway]

It appears there is already a copy of unbuntu server installed on one of the hotswappable drives. I have no passwords or anything so need to reinstall

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I'd rebuild the RAID....blow what's there away, recreate a fresh RAID 1.
Yank the SATA drive for now just to keep it out of the mix.

 

[Ashley Hathaway]

Well i found out the sata port on the main board is for sata optical drives so i guess the OS is installed on one of the hot swoppable drives. I am having trouble installing an OS though, it wasnt able to read the drives. Just started the install again, hopefully it will work. I am putting on unbuntu server again as that is all i have a copy of. Hpw do i create RAID 1, never touched RAID before...

edit: having trouble installing OS, trying to put OS on either drive gives me an error

 

[phaZed]

Hey Ashley,

You will need to access the RAID's BIOS.. you should see the "Option ROM" pop up after the BIOS as it initializes the RAID controller, something like:

If correct button like above, Hit F8 and you should get to some RAID config options to make an array... at which point, so long as the BIOS is set to boot from the RAID controller, your OS should see the "drive". The software will consider the RAID array to generally be a singular logical drive.

In here you can define what type of RAID volume, etc.

Also, sometimes the OS will not see the RAID drive at install time... make sure that the RAID controller is set as the 1st boot device.

 

[Ashley Hathaway]

Ah the first image looks farmiliure, so that's were i set up RAID.
so let me check my understanding of raid, it allows me to use multiple physical HDD's and see it as one drive. depending on the type of raid i want i can set certain drives to mirror meaning i have a backup should a drive fail or i could just set it up so i have one big drive.