power solutions february 2005 - dell · g. storage 67 exploring enhanced technologies in the...
TRANSCRIPT
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, February 2005. Copyright © 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
EDITOR’S COMMENTS
6 Tooling Up for Change Management By Tom Kolnowski
EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS
8 Maximizing Manageability Across
the Scalable Enterprise An interview with Rhonda Holt, vice president of systems management
software at Dell
NEW-GENERATION SERVER TECHNOLOGY
14 Systems Management Techniques for the
Dell PowerEdge 1855 Blade Server By Steven Grigsby and Narayan Devireddy
18 Remotely Managing the Dell PowerEdge 1855
Blade Server Using the DRAC/MC By Michael Brundridge and Ryan Putman
24 Enhancing Network Availability and Performance
on the Dell PowerEdge 1855 Blade Server
Using Network Teaming By Mike J. Roberts, Doug Wallingford, and Balaji Mittapalli
30 VMware Virtualization Software
on Dell Blade Servers By Balasubramanian Chandrasekaran and Simone Shumate
32 Efficient BMC Configuration on Dell PowerEdge Servers
Using the Dell Deployment Toolkit By Anusha Ragunathan, Alan Brumley, and Ruoting Huang
37 Remote OS Deployment Using Dell OpenManage
Server Assistant 8 and DRAC 4 By Michael E. Brown, Manoj Gujarathi, and Gong Wang
41 Migrating Enterprise Databases from Sun Servers
to the Dell PowerEdge 2850 Running
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 By Todd Muirhead and Dave Jaffe, Ph.D.
46 Managing Dell PowerEdge Server Alerts
Using Dell OpenManage Server Administrator By Haihong Zhuo, Michael O’Hara, and Jianwen Yin, Ph.D.
SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT
51 Deploying Dell Update Packages Using
Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 By Sandeep Karandikar and Manoj Gujarathi
58 Managing Dell Client Systems with
Enterprise Management Solutions By Jim Lathan
62 Agentless Monitoring of Dell PowerEdge Servers
Using Mercury SiteScope By Bill Fitzgerald and Bob Ure
POWERSOLUTIONST H E M A G A Z I N E F O R D I R E C T E N T E R P R I S E S O L U T I O N S
FEBRUARY 2005
COVER STORY | PAGE 10
Managing Change ThroughIndustry-Standard Technologies
By Paul Laster
Dell OpenManage 4 infrastructure and the recently announced
Dell OpenManage change management capability utilize industry-
standard technologies to provide extended systems management
functionality across the enterprise.
g
STORAGE
67 Exploring Enhanced Technologies in the
VERITAS Backup Exec Suite By Mike Garcia and Michael Parker
71 Enhancing Backup and Recovery Using Dell PowerVault
Storage Powered by CommVault Galaxy By Joe Pollock and Casey Burns
75 Branch Office Data Consolidation: Helping to Reduce Costs
and Increase Data Protection By Joe Pollock
79 Efficient Bare-Metal Disaster Recovery
from Yosemite Technologies By Eric Harless
SCALABLE ENTERPRISE
82 File Systems for the Scalable Enterprise By David Weber, Roger Goff, and Suri Brahmaroutu
86 The Promise of Unified I/O Fabrics By J. Craig Lowery, Ph.D., and David Schmidt
91 Progressive Degrees of Automation Toward
the Virtual Data Center By Jimmy Pike and Tim Abels
94 Deploying and Managing Oracle RAC with
Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Controlg By Rudramuni B, C.S. Prasanna Nanda, and Uday Datta Shet
98 Exploiting Automated Database Diagnostics
in Oracle Database 10g By Ramesh Rajagopalan, Uday Datta Shet, C.S. Prasanna Nanda, and Bharat Sajnani
102 Migrating Oracle Database 10g from Sun Serversgto Dell Servers
By Todd Muirhead; Dave Jaffe, Ph.D.; and Paul Rad
107 Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Scale-Out Performance
on a Dell PowerEdge High-Availability Cluster By Arrian Mehis, Ananda Sankaran, and Scott Stanford
THE MAGAZINE FOR DIRECT ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS
POWERSOLUTIONSWWW.DELL.COM/POWERSOLUTIONS
EDITORIAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF | Tom Kolnowski
MANAGING EDITOR | Debra McDonald
SENIOR EDITORS | Liza Graffeo, Cathy Luo, Anthony Poliseno, Vicki Van Ausdall
CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS | Tim Abels; Rizwan Ali; Rudramuni B; John Benninghoff; Suri
Brahmaroutu; Michael E. Brown; Alan Brumley; Michael Brundridge; Casey Burns; Onur
Celebioglu; Kalyana Chadalavada; Balasubramanian Chandrasekaran; Narayan Devireddy;
Yung-Chin Fang; Bill Fitzgerald; Mike Garcia; Roger Goff; Steven Grigsby; Manoj Gujarathi;
Baris Guler; Rinku Gupta; Eric Harless; Jenwei Hsieh, Ph.D.; Ruoting Huang; Munira
Hussain; Saeed Iqbal, Ph.D.; Dave Jaffe, Ph.D.; Rajiv Kapoor; Sandeep Karandikar;
Monica Kashyap; Garima Kochhar; Paul Laster; Jim Lathan; J. Craig Lowery, Ph.D.;
Arrian Mehis; Balaji Mittapalli; Todd Muirhead; C.S. Prasanna Nanda; Srivathsa NS;
Michael O’Hara; Michael Parker; Komal Patel; Ron Pepper; Jimmy Pike; Joe Pollock;
Ryan Putman; Paul Rad; Ramesh Radhakrishnan, Ph.D.; Anusha Ragunathan; Ramesh
Rajagopalan; Mike J. Roberts; Amina Saify; Bharat Sajnani; Ananda Sankaran; David
Schmidt; Uday Datta Shet; Lance Shuler; Simone Shumate; Pramada Singireddy; Sudhir
Srinivasan, Ph.D.; Scott Stanford; Bob Ure; Doug Wallingford; Gong Wang; David Weber;
Yi-Ming Xiong, Ph.D.; Jianwen Yin, Ph.D.; and Haihong Zhuo
ART
ART DIRECTOR | Mark Mastroianni
DESIGNER AND ILLUSTRATOR | Cynthia Webb
COVER DESIGN | Mark Mastroianni
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER | Lee Kirgan
ONLINE
WEB PRODUCTION | Brad Klenzendorf
SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES
CIRCULATION | Sheryl Williams
Subscriptions are free to qualified readers who complete the online subscription form or the subscrip-tion reply form on page 74 in this issue. To sign up as a new subscriber, renew an existing subscription,change your address, or cancel your subscription, submit the online subscription form at www.
dell.com/powersolutions_subscribe, return the subscription reply form by surface mail,or fax the subscription reply form to +1 512.283.0363. For subscription services, please [email protected].
ABOUT DELL
Dell Inc., headquartered in Round Rock, Texas, near Austin, is the world’s leading direct computersystems company. Dell is one of the fastest growing among all major computer systems companiesworldwide, with approximately 47,800 employees around the globe. Dell uses the direct businessmodel to sell its high-performance computer systems, workstations, and storage products to alltypes of enterprises. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.dell.com.
Dell, the Dell logo, Dell OpenManage, Dell Precision, Latitude, OptiPlex, PowerConnect, PowerEdge,and PowerVault are trademarks of Dell Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both. Othercompany, product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
Dell Power Solutions is published quarterly by the Dell Product Group, Dell Inc.s Dell Power Solutions, Mailstop 8456, Dell Inc., One Dell Way, Round Rock, TX 78682, U.S.A. This publication is also avail-able online at www.dell.com/powersolutions. No part of this publication may be reprintedor otherwise reproduced without permission from the Editor-in-Chief. Dell does not provide anywarranty as to the accuracy of any information provided through Dell Power Solutions. Opinionsexpressed in this magazine may not be those of Dell. The information in this publication is subjectto change without notice. Any reliance by the end user on the information contained herein is atthe end user’s risk. Dell will not be liable for information in any way, including but not limitedto its accuracy or completeness. Dell does not accept responsibility for the advertising contentof the magazine or for any claims, actions, or losses arising therefrom. Goods, services, and/oradvertisements within this publication other than those of Dell are not endorsed by or in any wayconnected with Dell Inc.
ON THE FRONT COVER | The Dell PowerEdge 1855 blade server.
Copyright © 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
February 2005
O CO STABLE OF CONTENTS
We welcome your questions, comments,
and suggestions. Please send your feedback
to the Dell Power Solutions editorial team s
TALK BACK
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, February 2005. Copyright © 22005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
WWW.DELL.COM/
POWERSOLUTIONS
Troubleshooting Enterprise Production
Environments Using Dell Server
Diagnostic Tools
By Komal Patel and Pramada Singireddy
Dell server diagnostic tools are engineered to augment fault isolation and root-cause
analysis in enterprise production environments. This article discusses various tools
available for server diagnostics at the tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 levels, along with best
practices for the use of server diagnostic tools.
Evaluating File-Serving Performance of
the Dell PowerEdge 700 Server
By Yi-Ming Xiong, Ph.D.
The Dell PowerEdge 700 demonstrated a considerable
performance gain compared to its predecessor, the PowerEdge 600SC, when Dell
engineers measured its file-serving performance using Ziff Davis NetBench. This arti-
cle explains the findings of this comparison test, including results for CPU frequency,
cache size, and memory size tests performed on the PowerEdge 700 server.
Understanding Performance of Molecular
Dynamics and Quantum Mechanics
Applications on Dell HPC Clusters
By Kalyana Chadalavada and Srivathsa NS
High-performance computing (HPC) clusters are proving to be suitable environ-
ments for running a wide range of parallel-processing applications. This article
discusses the performance and scalability of two domain-specific scientific
applications—NAMD (for molecular dynamics) and DFT++ (density-functional
theory)—on a Dell PowerEdge HPC cluster running Linux.
Considering Middleware Options
in High-Performance Computing Clusters
By Rinku Gupta, Monica Kashyap, Yung-Chin Fang,
and Saeed Iqbal, Ph.D.
Middleware is a critical component for the development and porting of parallel-
processing applications in distributed HPC cluster infrastructures. This article
describes the evolution of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard specifica-
tion as well as both open source and commercial MPI implementations that can be
used to enhance Dell HPC cluster environments.
Altiris Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Avocent Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
CommVault . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Dell Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29, 65, 69, 77
Emulex Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Enterasys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Intel Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C2
McDATA Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Microsoft Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Novell, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C4
Oracle Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3
QLogic Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Quantum DLTtape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
VERITAS Software Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
ADVERTISER INDEX
HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
111 Streamlining Beowulf Cluster Deployment
with NPACI Rocks By Rinku Gupta, Yung-Chin Fang, and Munira Hussain
115 Designing High-Performance Clusters
with the Dell PowerEdge SC1425 Server By Ron Pepper and Rinku Gupta
119 Performance Characterization of BLAST
on 32-bit and 64-bit Dell PowerEdge Servers By Ramesh Radhakrishnan, Ph.D.; Rizwan Ali; Garima Kochhar;
Kalyana Chadalavada; and Ramesh Rajagopalan
123 Getting the Best Performance from an HPC Cluster:
A STAR-CD Case Study By Baris Guler; Jenwei Hsieh, Ph.D.; Rajiv Kapoor; Lance Shuler;
and John Benninghoff
128 Achieving Scalable I/O Performance
in High-Performance Computing Environments By Amina Saify; Ramesh Radhakrishnan, Ph.D.; Sudhir Srinivasan, Ph.D.;
and Onur Celebioglu
133 Planning Considerations for Job Scheduling
in HPC Clusters By Saeed Iqbal, Ph.D.; Rinku Gupta; and Yung-Chin Fang
137 Understanding the Scalability of NWChem
in HPC Environments By Munira Hussain; Ramesh Radhakrishnan, Ph.D.; and Kalyana Chadalavada
O CO STABLE OF CONTENTS
ON
LIN
EO
NLI
NEX
TR
AD
ELL
PO
WE
R S
OLU
TIO
NS
MA
GA
ZIN
EA
RT
ICLE
S A
VAIL
AB
LE O
NLY
AT
WW
W.D
ELL
.CO
M/
PO
WE
RS
OLU
TIO
NS
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, February 2005. Copyright © 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.