[USER] OpenPower 720 support?

[Dave Hansen]

On Fri, 2004-09-17 at 08:48, Kevin P. Fleming wrote:
> (Dang, now I'm reposting because I used the wrong sender address. Doh!)

Fine, then!  I'll send two messages! :)

> (I'm posting here in spite of the warnings about this being a "developer
> only" list... I'm doing this because all the other lists are down/gone,
> and dwmw2 suggested I post here instead. Flame me if necessary <G>)
> 
> I'm looking at buying an OpenPower 720 instead of a number of x86-64
> boxes, for use as a web hosting/email hosting/offsite data
> storage/MySQL/etc. box. Initially I'd have 6 LPARs, growing to maybe as
> many as 20. I'm looking at a 2-way 1.65GHz box (4-way box with 2 CPUs),
> 4GB of RAM, FC HBAs, HMC, etc.
> 
> My question, though, is that I'm not really keen on using SLES9, and I
> really want to use the 2.6 kernel so that rules out RHES. I am perfectly
> comfortable building my own distro to put on this system, but I'm
> concerned that things like LPAR support and other fancy bits are not
> present in the kernel.org kernel and I'd be losing access to the
> features I'm paying for.
> 
> Can anyone give me some thoughts on whether using one of these machines
> with an in-house distro is a wise move?

Let me just say that the software that interfaces with the HMC is very
powerful.  So powerful, in fact, that it has a number of very
intertwined components.  

I once knew a young, naive, Linux kernel developer who thought that he
could do DLPAR operations on his Debian machine.  He failed, and uses
SLES9 for that development to this day.  It can surely be done, he just
wasn't clever or patient enough to figure it out. 


-- Dave