Lukas Beeler’s IT Blog

I’ve written a bit about ESXi before in a comparison to other free virtualization products from an SMB perspective.

I’ve seen the “big” ESX in a few places and worked a bit with it, but i decided to refresh my knowledge on VMware a bit. For this, i first had to scrounge up a machine that was able to pass the rigorous HCL from VMware.

Unfortunately i didn’t find something that was really a Small Business machine - i used a HS21 Blade from my BladeCenter S testing environment.

The HS21 blade has 4GB RAM, a 2.66 Ghz QuadCore CPU and two 500GB SATA Harddisks attached to an LSI1064 SAS Controller. Fortunately, this configuration is supported.

Installing ESXi

Similar to the installation of Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista, the ESXi installation is extremely streamlined. All you have to do is pop the CD in, select the disk where you want to install ESXi and then let it continue. The whole setup took around 15 minutes, most of the delay owed to the extremely slow Laptop CD Drive installed in the BladeCenter S.

After installation, the Blade rebooted and you will be greeted by an extremely simplistic interface that allows you to change basics like the password of ESXi and reconfigure the management network interface and also display a few logfiles. On first startup, it also showed my a Web address where i can download the VI Client that is used to manage ESXi.

A very pleasant experience.

Installing the VI Client

After accessing the ESXi host through HTTP, i could then download the VI Client. Installation on another Blade running WS2008 was smooth. It also installed an Update Service that allows me to upgrade ESXi.

Configuring ESXi for the first time

After logging on using the VI Client to ESXi, i was greeted with a nicely detailed instructions that i would need to create a datastore. After few clicks i had a datastore created on the RAID1 that ESXi was installed.

The VI Client looks very impressive and neat. It looks like ESXi can read diagnostic information from the Blade, and can monitor RAID, Fan and other stati easily. One of the things i really like about this is that you get a standardized interface for monitoring your hardware - on Windows you usually have to use tools like IBM Director that are just one big mess to handle. Here, i didn’t have to configure anything - it just worked.

After entering licensing information, configurating a static IP Address, changing hostname and DNS information, i rebooted the blade.

Creating the first Virtual Machine

I decided to create a first virtual machine - the blade i killed for running ESXi was previously running Exchange 2007. As this is just a demonstration setup, i decided to recover the preexisting Exchange server into a VM, in order continue having a full featured demo setup.

So i created a new Virtual Machine, configured for running Windows Server 2008 x64. Now, i didn’t have WDS setup in the Demo Environment, so i had to find a way to boot the Blade from an ISO. Previously i used scp to copy the ISO to the ESX Management Partition, but that didn’t work on ESXi. Luckily, the VI Client has a “Datastore Browser” that allowed me to upload files to the vmfs3 filesystem.

After uploading the ISO, i booted from it. The installation was pretty slow, but comparisons to my Hyper-V hosts aren’t fair as those run 10kRPM 147GB SAS Disks in a RAID5 configuration instead of the slow-as-molasses 500GB 7.2kRPM SATA Disks.

After OS installation, i immediately installed the VMware tools. One reboot later, i had a working Windows Server 2008 machine.

One of the things i noticed: When running WS08 virtualized on Hyper-V with 4 virtual CPUs on a Quadcore machine, WS08 thinks i have on Quadcore. On VMware, WS08 thinks i have 4 real CPUs (Sockets). This can bite you if you want to give a WS08 Std Machine more than 4 Cores - as WS08 Std is only licensed to four sockets.

The next step obviously is restoring the Exchange server, but that doesn’t really have to do all that much with ESXi.

Conclusion

ESXi is great. One of the biggest advantages over Hyper-V is the VI Client that consolidates a lot of information that is all strewn about in Windows. For example, it has built-in performance metrics, raid status monitors, etc. You can get all the same information with a machine running Hyper-V, but you’ll have to use other tools for that (of course you can customize a MMC do include Perfmon, but it’s not exactly the same).

VMware shows that they have gained long term experience with Virtual Machines, and the VI Client clearly shows the maturity of their product.

Permission management seems much better than Hyper-V, but i didn’t find a way to use Active Directory integration. Maybe Virtual Center is required to this, or i just wasn’t able to find it in ESXi - it exists, because there are numerous references on the Web.

I’ll certainly consider using Hyper-V when i have to run non-Windows guests. For Windows guests, Hyper-V with it’s VMbus architecture seems better suited. For non-Windows guests, VMware can’t be beaten right now.

SonicWALL recently launched a new SMB Firewall Appliance - the NSA 2400. Pictured to the right is an NSA 3500 - the look mostly similar, and have the same number of ports (i couldn’t find a high-res image of the NSA 2400).

So far, we have mostly used ZyXEL’s ZyWALL products to serve our Small Business customers, however the ZyWALL Line wasn’t always very satisfying when moving to the upper end of the Small Business spectrum. Thus, we had a look at SonicWALL - i’ve been using them for quite some time.

There are a few things about SonicWALL that is different about people which are used to the low-end market (like the ZyXEL products).

• You’ll need to purchase Software Maintenance in order to be able to download newer Firmware versions
• The old SonicWall Hardware Generations (TZ / PRO) have “Standard” and “Enhanced” Firmware images - the Standard versions are stripped down and less flexible - the NSA Models just have “Enhanced”
• Registration on MySonicWall is mandatory

One of the things fixed with the release of SonicOS 5.0 was the graphical user interface - the new GUI is completely revamped, and looks like something that belongs to the Year 2008. Other improvements include a completely redesigned hardware, that uses multi-core CPUs to provide real-time traffic analysis.

The NSA Series ship with basic Firewall/VPN features that are licensed as part of the base hardware. Additional features like Anti-Virus Scanning, Content Filtering, Anti-Spam, Intrusion Detection and Prevention all require extra expenses. This model is similar to what other UTM appliances like the ZyWALL 5 UTM uses.

SonicWALL Global VPN Client is a IPsec compatible VPN client, that works pretty well. There is not 64bit Version yet, and it doesn’t work with other VPN Clients running on the same PC. If you do not want to use SonicWALLs GVC, the SonicWALL also offers the ability to use L2TP and your Operating Systems native VPN functionality. While L2TP connections are mostly unrestricted, the number of GVC Licenses can be pretty low (e.G. 10 for the NSA2400).

One of the main advantages over the ZyWALL Line of products is the object-based configuration, and the ability to have multiple, Gigabit interfaces on the hardware - the NSA 2400 offers 6 Gigabit interfaces with the ability to use 802.1q VLANs to create even more logical interfaces. Even the low-end NSA 2400 can offer quite a lot of throughput (I’ve measured up to 30 Megabyte / s), which is important if you have Servers deployed in your DMZ.

Other cool features include the “SonicPoint” Management, which is basically the same as Symbol’s or Cisco’s Lightweight Wireless Access Points. This is a very cool feature in Smaller Businesses that do not want to buy separate Hardware to maintain their Wireless Infrastructure.

You can even access Live Demo of the SonicWALL Web Interface to see for yourself.

Advantages

• Very flexible configuration
• Streamlined GUI with useful features like Packet Capturing and self updating Log views
• Lightweight VPN Client and the ability to use Standard L2TP
• Lightweight Access Point Deployment using the NSA as a base
• LDAP Integration, preconfigured for Active Directory
• 6 Gigabit Interfaces
• High Performance

Disadvantages

• High price of Hardware (List: 2700 CHF)
• High price of mandatory service contracts for Firmware updates (List: 1300 CHF for 3Y 7×24 and HW Advance Replacement)
• High price of UTM features licenses (List: Starting at 1700 CHF for 3Y AS/AV/IPS)
• Incomplete user authentication solution (based on an Agent using WMI to query logged on userinstead of using secure Kerberos authentication)
• No redundant PSU or Fans to compensate for high hardware price (the NSA 7500 has redundant Fan/PSU)

Last Friday i received a new toy. An IBM BladeCenter S, with two HS21, one HS21 XM and a JS12 Blade.

The BladeCenter S

The BladeCenter S i received came with 10 500GB SATA Disks and two DSMs, four power supplies, an Advanced Management Module, a Server Connectivity Module and a SAS Connectivity Module. The power supplies use standard 230V type 23 plugs, which do require a little special installation, but much less so than industrial plugs used with the bigger BladeCenters.

The big point about the BladeCenter S is that it does not require an external SAN to provide Storage to the Blade - an integrated SAS Switch that allows very flexible disk configurations is integrated. Configuration can be done using a Webbrowser against the SAS Connectivity Web Interface, using SSH/Telnet to access the SAS Connectivity Commandline, or using a fully graphical interface using IBM’s Storage Configuration Manager. There are some predefined configurations, but none of them suited my configuration - creating new configurations using SCM is easy enough though.

The disks in the BladeCenter’s DSMs (Disk Storage Module) are hot swappable - currently, only 3.5″ DSMs are available, with a 2.5″ DSM in the pipeline. Most of the blades support one or two internal disks, but the problem here is that these disks are not hot swappable. Depending on your Blade loadout, 12 disks might not be enough. For example, the HS21 XM Blades only fit one internal disk, and running without RAID on the System partition seems pointless, so you would be using at least 6 disks (without hotspares) for a basic Exchange deployment.

The Webinterface on the AMM is nicely done, although it lacks a bit of flashiness. That’s not a requirement though, it does a very solid job at what it needs to do.

After powering up the BladeCenter S for the first time, i connected to it using a web browser and upgraded all the firmwares. There are quite a lot of them (AMM, SAS, Server Connectivity), but it all worked out flawlessly. Time to move on to the real course: the Blades.

The HS21 and the HS21 XM

Starting with the familiar first, i started with the HS21 Intel Blades first. The two HS21 Blades both had a 2.66 Ghz Quadcore and 4GB RAM, the HS21 XM Blade had a 2.5 Ghz Quadcore and 9GB of RAM (more about that later).

When starting the first HS21 Blade, after configuring all the storage using SCM, it failed to POST it’s LSI Logic SAS/RAID Controller. I searched for the error message on the net, assuming that i screwed up the configuration. I didn’t find anything meaningful, so i tried to do what everyone else would do in this situation: Apply every Firmware update for the Blade i could find.

Of course it wasn’t as easy as i wanted it to be. The controller not POSTing was an endless loop, i couldn’t get the machine to start from the AMM virtual floppy drive. I used SCM to disconnect the storage (by disabling the Blade’s SAS port). Now, the blade booted flawlessly, indicating that i probably had a problem with my disks. When browsing the IBM website, it became obvious that only newer firmwares support SATA drives. After upgrading the SAS Firmware, i was able to boot the blade without disabling the Blade’s SAS port. Unfortunately, the onboard SAS controller only supports RAID level 1 and 10. Probably owed to the fact that most blades are using SAN storage - IBM promised that there would be SAS RAID adapter that supports other RAID levels - these are especially important for the cost-conscious SMB market.

I booted a Windows PE 2.0 using WDS, and was able to install Windows Server 2008 x64 without any issues.

The HS21 XM blade on the other hand complained when booted for the first time that it’s memory configuration was invalid - it only supports 2, 4 and 8 DIMM configurations - 6 DIMM configurations are not supported. I removed two 512MB modules and booted the Blade with 8GB - it worked flawlessly and without complaining.

The JS12

First, read this document about i on Blade. It explains everything better than i ever could.

The JS12 is a POWER6 based blade that is able to run IBM i. The first time i turned on the blade, all the HS21 blades (already running Windows Server 2008) crashed hard. When rebooting, they no longer found their drives. I turned off all the blades, disconnected the JS12’s SAS port and turned everything on again. The Intel blades booted, and after i was sure that they’re up and running again, i powered on the JS12 again. This time, no issue arised. I tried to reproduce the behaviour i’ve seen before, and the same thing happened again.

My current assumption is that the issues were caused by the SAS Controller which does not have a Firmware update yet, and can’t deal with the SATA drives located in the DSMs. Further investigation told me that there’s no firmware upgrade for the SAS Controller in the POWER6 blade, and that SATA drives are not supported when running IBM i on the blade anyway. I ordered 4 147GB SAS drives, disabled the SAS port on the blade, and tried booting the POWER6 blade again. It booted flawlessly again.

The next step was to install VIOS - this is a rather complicated multi-step process. First, you have to turn on “Serial over LAN” aka SOL, then logon to the AMM using SSH, connect to the POWER blade using serial passthrough and then boot the blade from the VIOS CD. The install is pretty self explanatory, but takes forever. Expect 3 to 4 hours.

Next is connecting to the Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM) running on the VIOS partition. The IVM is basically a HMC light minus the console functionality. The only way to get a console on the JS12 blade is using a LAN console (which can only run on consumer versions of Windows, and is not supported on most of the Blades).

I installed the latest VIOS patches (around 4GB) and enabled mirroring on the two 147GB SAS disks in the blade itself. The next step will be installing IBM i, with which i have to wait until i receive the ordered SAS Disks. Installing the patches also takes quite some time, around 30 minutes.

Preliminary Summary

The BladeCenter S is great. Yep, not everything ran flawlessly from the start, but nobody’s perfect from the beginning. The BladeCenter brings an innovative new perspective to the SMB market. The problems that IBM needs to address are the addition of 2.5″ DSMs (already in the works) and more capable RAID controllers (also in the works). A BladeCenter S with the ability to use around 20-40 disks could prove interesting.

The POWER6 Blade is interesting, and while VIOS adds complexity, it is as streamlined as possible. I’m interested about seeing IBM i running on the machine.

If you have any other question about the BladeCenter S - or anything you would like to see in detail, post a comment. I’ll try to figure it out.

If you have a few printers, you usually want to take good care of them. There are many network administration tools that can help you do that, and here i’m talking mostly about HP’s free offerings. Let’s start with the biggest one first.

HP Web Jetadmin

HP Web Jetadmin is HP’s enterprise tool for printer management. It is free though, so i gave it a try. Turns out it really is an enterprise tool, and much too convoluted for SMB use. I like that it has the ability to at least manage some features from printers made by different manufacturers (in my case, Lexmark). You don’t see that every day. I can’t give a full review of the product, because i only invested half an hour in it, only to find out that it is too big for our environment.

It offers all the features one could possibly need - it can monitor toner, media, configuration, time firmware upgrades and can even be used to configure and maintain print servers. With all these features, deployment of this tool is most likely not going to be a short process. You’ll need to invest a few days to find out about all the kinks, functionality and integrate it into your environment meaningfully.

HP Easy Printer Care

HP Easy Printer Care is HP’s Small Business printer management tool. It only supports up to 15 printers, which is not a problem if you’re a small business that uses workgroup printers. For companies that are using a printer on every desktop, 15 might be too low.

The software is meant for use on a desktop computer, not on a server. I see this as a bit of a drawback, as we usually use Microsoft Small Business Servers at our smaller customers, but you can also install the software on a server - it just can’t send emails and notifications (though most of the larger HP printers can mail notifications!).

The tool can not manage the printer firmware, which is a huge drawback. But it allows easy configuration of several settings even by end users, which are sometimes intimidated by the printer menu or the printer web interface. It also allows rudimentary printer accounting on selected (not all) printers (If you’re looking for a more complete printer account software, i can recommend PaperCut NG).

While i think that Web Jetadmin is overkill for any SMB, Easy Printer Care is sometimes too light on functionality. But i like it’s end user oriented design. If HP adds a few nudges to EPC (like mail, firmware management and minimal third party printer support), it could very well become a good tool for SMBs.

HP Download Manager

Using HP Download Manager is like stabbing a fork into your eye. It’s not pleasant, and after the pain stops you’re blind. Okay, so this might’ve been a bit colorful, but the point still stands. This software is junk, mostly because it doesn’t work. HP Download Manager is a firmware management solution for JetDirect print servers that are either stand alone or embedded into printers. It can’t manage printer firmware, which HP Web JetAdmin can.

Internet mode is broken since ages, there are numerous references about this on the web. Using Wireshark, a web server, and the hosts file will get the software to at least download firmware, but it won’t be able to install the software, complaining about “no firmware file”. It could download the file just fine, and manually applying the file using the JetDirect Webinterface worked just dandy.

As such, i can’t recommend this tool. Don’t install it, it doesn’t work right, and will probably eat your eyes.

Conclusion

HP’s Easy Printer Care is a step in the right direction, HP Download Manager doesn’t work, and HP Web Jetadmin is most likely overkill. My hope is that HP improves Easy Printer Care, allowing it to takeover the functions that HP Download Manager should do.

I’m a bit biased on this, so just a precaution.

We needed a new MFP to replace our aging fax, and so we purchased a Brother MFC-9420CN. My first impressions of this device weren’t really good. At first, it lacks a good display (HP’s M3027 is really good on this). This makes using the device much more complicated than it ought to be.

The biggest advantage of the MFC-9420CN is the fact that it is a color laser, with a rather low price point of around 1000 CHF. At this price point, it’s of course a multi pass laser and prints about 9 color pages per minute. Copying and faxing works, through network integration here is almost non-existant. You can’t fax through a web interface, there is no LDAP integration to lookup mail addresses for scan2email or fax numbers, you can’t scan to folders. Not active directory integration for authentication either.

If you have look to the right, you’ll find a screenshot of the web interface of Brothers MFC-9420CN. It doesn’t look current. In fact, even the copyright notice clearly shows that it’s not current. Add to that page load times of several seconds, a very convulated page structure and few available settings (much less than ever smaller HP printers like the CLJ2605) clearly shows that this device has aged badly.

I even checked Brothers Website to see if they have a firmware update available, but they don’t. At least they have drivers for Vista, but they also look rather outdated, and are not signed (though Brother claims that they’re WHQL certified). If you look to the right side, you’ll see a comparison screenshot between the driver for the HP CLJ 4700 and Brothers 9420. While HP took care to make their driver look polished (it’s the only software the end users will ever see), Brother’s drivers looks outdated (especially the 256 color graphic of the device).

There is no address book or even LDAP interface for sending e-mails - thus sending mails requiring you to type in the adress using a standard number block, similar to typing SMS on a mobile phone. HP’s M3027 provides you with a keyboard on it’s mighty touchscreen display, while Brothers device requires you to spend minutes trying to type up a single mail address.

Copying and faxing works fine, but the whole network integration barely exists. I think this is a huge disadvantage of this device. Even though Brother advertises it’s device as being network integrable, Brother’s device massively fails at this point.

This doesn’t make it a bad device. For 1000 CHF, you can get a color laser printer that can be used to print over the network, and can also act as a fax and a copier. While HP’s devices offer much more functionality, they’re only b&w and more expensive. As such, there is a certain market for Brother’s device.

I’m still disappointed though, because i expected Brother to put up more of a fight - it wouldn’t be hard to fix the cosmetical issues, offer appropriately signed drivers, and integrate more functionality into the device.

Currently, i’m still waiting for my copy of 5722-QU2, aka Web Query. We’ve ordered it over a month ago, and have received the keys in the meanwhile, but no media. While IBM does theoretically offer media download, it does not do so for 5722-QU2 (Wondering where you can download i5/OS media? IBM ESS).

The fact that i haven’t got any interesting project running right now, and IBM isn’t shipping me new toys i just decided to complain about delivery times. This might not actually be interesting.

When it comes to delivery times, my experience with IBM has always been abysmal. The local swiss distributors (Avnet, TechData, Also) are usually low on stock, don’t have any System i stock (automatically giving you 2-8 weeks, depending on IBM’s mood). Software orders also take ages, especially additional software on new Systems (we usually buy 5722-IP1 for our customers to generate PDF). These software orders usually take 2+ weeks after the system was shipped.

Even System x servers are rather hard to come by. While there are usually a few (less than 5) models on stock, additional parts (like disks, memory) are sometimes out of stock too. Out of stock articles usually take up to three weeks.

The situation is even worse with IBM printers - no stock anywhere, and delivery times are 4+ weeks.

Other manufacturers understand their supply chain even for smaller countries like Switzerland. One of the good examples here is HP. You usually have many servers plus parts available on stock - every reasonable printer model (less than 10k) is also available on stock. Microsoft doesn’t have any problem shipping their licenses (one or two days for electronic licenses), and shipping time for media kits is a simple next business day thing.

Why can’t IBM get their act straight and have their (expensive) stuff available on a simple next business day basis?

It’s hard to sell a customer an IBM printer if you have to tell him that it takes several weeks until he gets it. Most smaller businesses don’t buy maintenance contracts for their printers, and just buy a new one when the old one dies - this doesn’t work when you have 4 weeks of lead time for a simple InfoPrint 1532.

One thing i would be interested in: Is this better in the USA? Or in Germany?

Over the past few years, PCs have become smaller and faster. But many companies still default to mini towers when buying new PCs, even though there might be other form factors that could suit their needs better.

Lenovo currently offers four form factors of desktop computers - each with their advantages and disadvantages. The pictures that you’ll see here are not the latest, but they’re the best hires pictures i could find - current models no longer have floppy drives, but the cases have remained the same size and design.

The classic mini tower

The mini tower is found in almost every company. They usually offer place for a second hard disc, a second optical drive, a fully fledged PCI-E x16 graphic card (not all models), and a few more expansion slots (usually PCI-E x1 and two PCI slots). As such, much office furniture has been made to be fit with mini tower PCs, and this is why they still see much use.

Mini towers are a great choice if you might want to expand the use of the machine, by adding specialized equipment to it. Some models offer more DIMM slots (4 instead of 2), which allows easier upgrade of system memory.

In my opinion, mini towers are oversized for most office workplaces. They eat much space, cabling them is more difficult as the standard cables on equipment get shorter and shorter, and they do not always offer advantages for a plain office worker.

However, Lenovo recently started shipping ThinkCentre towers with 2GB of standard memory if ordered with Windows Vista. This has not yet become a reality for the other form factors, which puts the cost advantage at the ThinkCentre towers.

The small form factor (SFF) PCs

The SFF PCs are the size i think is ideal for most purposes. They usually offer place for two DIMM slots, a standard sized optical drive, and two expansion slots (usually an Intel ADD2 slot (for DVI) and a single PCI-E x1 or PCI slot).

They are big enough to still have room for expansion, are pretty quiet since the diameter of the fan can be large enough, and offer the advantages of a PC that can be installed right on the desk. The main reason for this is usually reducing the hassle with cabling various devices, using USB hubs, USB extender cables and other gizmos.

A speciality of Lenovo’s SFF product line is that they ship with a stand that allows them to be set next to the monitor, not below it. This is an advantage for people with big screens or that want to look down to their screen.

The biggest disadvantage of the SFF models is that you can only fit two DIMMs into it. When ordering low volume, you currently get models with 2×512M pre-installed, and upgrading to 2×1G (that are IMO required for Vista) adds an unnecessary cost. Lenovo will probably start offering models with 2GB by default soon, so this point will no longer be that important.

The ultra small form factor (USFF) PCs

Until recently, the USFF models were the smallest PCs you could buy. They are built using desktop CPU and mainboards, but use some laptop components like the optical drive. The biggest problem of these little machines is heat - while the cooling is nice and quite during normal office work, it could get extremely noisy when you were loading the CPU during extended time periods (especially the PIV/PD models had big problems with that). Now that these models use Intels Core 2 CPUs, the problem is no longer that big, but still existent.

Not all USFF models offer expansion slots, and the laptop optical drive offers additional disadvantages when looking for non-OEM replacements a few years down the road. Again, the earlier comment about only being able to fit two DIMMs into the machine applies.

Honestly, i’ve never seen much of an advantage of this form factor over the SFF models, maybe someone can enlighten me.

The A61e

Lenovo recently introduced the ThinkCentre A61e. I’m sorry i didn’t find a better shot of this machine, but they’re not shipping in Switzerland yet. This machine is smaller than the USFF models, and maybe it will get a new designation (like nano form factor or something equally silly - i hope not).

The biggest change from all the other product lines is that this machine has moved to an external power supply, and switched back to a normal optical drive. I really dislike external power supplies, because they can get lost, can be expensive to replace, etc.

Again, i’ve never seen this machine or made practical experiences with it. I didn’t see the need for USFF models, and i certainly don’t see them for this little baby. It looks nice though, and it might be a very good choice in a different field of operations.

We’ve just received a new System x3200, to serve as an infrastructure hub for our POS software at a Small Business customer. Unlike all other machines i’ve talked about before (HP DL320 G5, System x3650 vs. HP DL380 G5, System x3250, System x3650), this machine is a tower model. With IT moving more and more towards a professional service subset, tower machines are getting less and less common, but many small businesses do not see the return on investment a rack mounted server will give them. As such, IBM still produces a few decent System x servers in the tower form factor.

The x3200 brother is the rackmounted System x3250. Both of them are IBM’s low end entry systems. The x3200 we sold to our customer was one of more well endowed models, featuring redundant power supplies and hot plug SAS disks.

The disks come in a standard 3.5″ form factor, there are no 2.5″ models available (which makes sense, as towers are not really space constrained, which is clearly visible when looking at the x3200 bulky frame).

The exact configuration ordered:

• System x3250 Xeon 2.13Ghz DC, with 2×512MB Base Memory, 3.5″ HP SAS, redundant PSU
• 2x 72GB 10kRPM SAS

Unpacking and opening

The machine was shipped in a box where you’d have thought it contains a 5 year old desktop PC, meaning it was a bit bigger than the Lenovo ThinkCentre tower shipping boxes. As always, removing the machines from these boxes is not as fun when you’re alone, because the styropor sticks to the machine.

Another thing to note is that the machine shipping without any power cables, which is normally not the case. But this might’ve been a mixup at our distributor.

The machine itself is big and bulky (exactly as it looks on the photos), but the case is very well done, much better than the xSeries 226 had. Everything is tool less, and the opening mechanisms for the front and side cover work nicely, and fit like a glove when putting them back on.

Interiors

Even though this is a budget machine, the interior is done rather well. The cables are packed together nicely, and the system has room for expansion. 4x 3.5″ HP SAS disk trays, 3 PCI slots, 2 PCI-E Slots (1x, 4x). The LSI Logic SAS RAID Controller is mounted directly on the mainboard, saving expansion slots. Again, this machine only accepts 4 DIMMs, which aren’t that accessible. But this isn’t a huge problem, as maintenance on tower models has always been awkward and finicky - that’s what rack servers are for.

The machine isn’t quiet, but it isn’t loud either. I wouldn’t mind having it in my office, the noise is not a high pitched scream like you usually get from a 1U rack server. There is no inline documentation like IBM usually provides with their rack mount servers, and there’s no LightPath diagnostics either. That’s perfectly normal for this price.

What isn’t usual for this price class is the fact that this machine has redundant power supplies. While this is the norm for more expensive servers, it isn’t for entry level servers. The redundant power supplies do not cost a lot more than the normal model, and it’s always nice to have redundant power (as UPSes account for a large number of power failures, at least here in Switzerland).

Installing options

We only got a few disks with the machine, and installing them was a breeze. They are hid behind an easily openable lid, and come in a standard IBM hotplug mounting tray.

The machine we received had horrible outdated firmware, so the first step was to get everything up to speed. This worked fine with an USB floppy drive, as IBMs Update CD’s weren’t current (again). I still think there should be some method that does all this whole box-update thing via the internet. Not sure how this could be implemented without astronomic cost, but i still want it.

The Onboard LSI Logic RAID Controller supports mirroring and striping, and brings it’s own horrible management software - it’s not an IBM ServeRAID family controller. I didn’t even find a way to automatically send mails in case of a disk failure.

Booting the server

We’ve installed Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 on this machine, not using the ServerGuide procedure. Again, the install went through without any problems after supplying the LSI Logic driver on an USB floppy. I’m still waiting for Windows Server 2008 which will make this a lot easier with it’s Windows PE 2.0 based installer.

As far as my first impressions went, the disk performance is very good. It’s quite noticeable if you use 10kRPM SAS disks against 7.2kRPM SATA disks.

Resumee

Even though it’s a budget machine, the build quality and the features of the System x3200 are quite impressive (i really, really liked two PSUs in such a small machine). I still don’t like tower machines, but the System x3200 is worth it’s money if you don’t have a rack at a given location. The system is very well designed, and could even serve as a small business server for a very small business.

Also, the obligatory plug to DATALINE AG which sells this server and other IBM System x or System i servers.

Lenovo is selling a new screen, that can be rotated, and finally solves the cabling problem that comes with the rotating capability.

If you need to the type and serial number of a Lenovo ThinkPad or ThinkCentre, use these two quick WMI commands:

C:\Windows\system32>wmic /node:"HOST" bios get serialnumber
SerialNumber
L3BXXXXX

C:\Windows\system32>wmic /node:"HOST" baseboard get product
Product
646065G

Replace HOST with the hostname of the machine you want to check on. The ” ” are important, so don’t leave them out.