A Quick Update

[bjarvis]

Where to start...

• The x4600 server which has been spontaneously rebooting seems to be calmer now thanks to a BIOS/ILOM upgrade and turning off the PowerNow feature. After a couple of weeks to bake, we'll do the same upgrade on the other machines. I'm going to take some time later in the day to check the firmware versions of all of my servers to see which other models could use an update of some variety. Thanks to snowboardjoe for a faster & more coherent recommendation than we could get from Sun support!
  
• I've finished making the 800 brunch tickets for the upcoming DC Diamond Circulate convention. I need to keep working on producing & copying the other docs which will go into the registration packets.
  
• I survived another convention planning meeting last Sunday: 5 hours. We have two more similar meetings coming up on the next two consecutive Sundays.
  
• I'm calling club nights in Baltimore tonight and DC Thursday. I also have to work a night shift this Wednesday.
  
• Last night's C2 square dance class went well. It was nearly all review but we added "walk out to a wave" to our repertoire: the description was written by ADD chimpanzees on crack but the call dances well. :-)
  
• I'm up early this morning so I can go to a show-and-tell by Brocade about their latest & greatest in SAN switches. I'm not in the market per se but it doesn't hurt to keep abreast of such things, it doesn't cost anything, it's only a few miles from home and I'll be done before my esteemed California colleagues get to the office.
  

Comments

[fuzzygruf.livejournal.com]

Somehow I don't think you're going to miss 5-hour convention meetings. Call it a hunch.

I love "Walk Out To A Wave" except when the caller adds "and roll." Bastards.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Actually, we've been warned to expect post-partem depression once it is all over by prior conventions' committees. After all
, we've been meeting and planning regularly for five years now. Still, it will be nice to have some scheduling flexibility again.

[snowboardjoe.livejournal.com]

I'm just glad you posted here about the x4600 problem. It's more like an M2 problem as it affected all of our x4100-M2 servers and we have a lot of them. It seems with each passing year firmware becomes far more complex and problematic regardless of the vendor though.

If you have not applied LSI updates (RAID firmware) you should definitely do those too. There is a bug that will cause a mirrored disk to offline without warning. LSI MPT BIOS should be 6.18.01 and MPT SAS should be 1.23.90 at a minimum.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I did the LSI upgrade at the same time.