Never Let the Vendor Set Up a Server
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Budget + lack of understanding dictate many don't have it.
I literally don't know how to buy something even remotely business class, intended to be used as a server, that doesn't have out of band management. What kind of devices are people using as servers that you are seeing so often?
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It's probably that the servers do have it, it's just never been setup or used, so they are unaware.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
Budget + lack of understanding dictate many don't have it.
What kind of devices are people using as servers that you are seeing so often?
Budget does not always = software.
It often equals time and money for businesses, chiefly those of their IT support or internal team. Why do you need remote tools when you can walk up to a server? I mean we'll never need that obscure OEM feature that HP slapped on right?
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@Dashrender said:
It's probably that the servers do have it, it's just never been setup or used, so they are unaware.
Or the vendors charge too much for the software licenses.
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@Dashrender said:
It's probably that the servers do have it, it's just never been setup or used, so they are unaware.
Oh, that I know is common. But actually getting one without it, I can't think of how to do that. That IT is often not properly setting up their machines is not surprising. Hence the entire purpose of this post - to address servers being set up incorrectly
RAID, OOB, HV install... all part of the "getting it right the first time" process. -
@dafyre said:
Or the vendors charge too much for the software licenses.
Not aware of anyone who charges for basic OOB.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
It often equals time and money for businesses, chiefly those of their IT support or internal team.
As in.... they aren't concerned about wasting time and money?
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@scottalanmiller said:
As in.... they aren't concerned about wasting time and money?
Why would you waste money when you can invoice for on site engineer time? = Profit.
If you don't know what is available to you as a customer, how will you know what other alternatives you have?
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@scottalanmiller said:
As in.... they aren't concerned about wasting time and money?
Why would you waste money when you can invoice for on site engineer time? = Profit.
If you don't know what is available to you as a customer, how will you know what other alternatives you have?
That's very valid. I've seen a lot of service providers pull that kind of stuff. Customers don't push for good up front setup and it is financially in the interest of the service providers to not push the point so they don't. Although how many customers then react when they find out that that stuff is happening? Most seem to just not care.
This is why someone has to oversee that good practices are being followed, whether it is internal IT or an external function there needs to be somebody responsible for oversight. No one is perfect, of course, but there needs to be a role that is handling that or things are going to be missed all of the time.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
Or the vendors charge too much for the software licenses.
Not aware of anyone who charges for basic OOB.
We couldn't download the iLO software for our (umm...) HP servers that I recall without having to pay a few hundred dollars per server. Granted this was several years ago, and we were likely looking in the wrong places, but I don't recall us ever finding even the basic version for free... (I assume OOB means you are talking about things like a remote console type setup?)
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@dafyre said:
We couldn't download the iLO software for our (umm...) HP servers that I recall without having to pay a few hundred dollars per server.
Download? What is there to download? It's built in. You just plug into it. What server(s) were these? I've used nearly everything from the Compaq era through the G8s and have not seen anything without a free, unlicensed ILO option in all of that time.
In recent times, we always pay for the upgraded ILO because KVMoIP is well worth it. But basic OOB has been free on every machine I've looked at since the DL145 G2 well over a decade ago (before that you had to add on the ILO physically as it was not integrated yet.)
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@dafyre said:
Granted this was several years ago, and we were likely looking in the wrong places, but I don't recall us ever finding even the basic version for free... (I assume OOB means you are talking about things like a remote console type setup?)
Remote console is not always free, sadly. But remote monitoring and power cycling is always free AFAIK. The KVMoIP is so worth it, though. And you get remote DVD drive too. Which is a way better place to spend the money than paying for a physical DVD drive in the machines!
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SuperMicro's IPMI is completely open and free.
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Even before the ILOs were ILOs (before the I was there for Integrated) I was physically adding the ILO external cards to every one of my servers, even at home, since 2000 with the DL360 G1s that used Pentium III.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Here's an older video on what ILO is and why it is cool.
Thanks. I was more interested in how you would connect, but I'm guessing that you will need VPN access to our LAN. Not a problem, but not trivial either.
But that video is useful. iLO is definitely something I've ignored too long and I've put it on my task list to setup.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
And the courier fee does go up and down like a yoyo but it has been £25 for next day with insurance at one time, ballpark £75 at most.
OK. Call it £75. So you're saving me £275 as it stands. Not bad, but not massive. I also forgot to mention that I need an old server removing from the rack, so you will probably want to add a bit on for that. If it sounds trivial, I should point out that it took our "engineer" about half-an-hour to get the rails out. Everyone seems to struggle with our rack.
And I would call him an engineer, regardless of what @scottalanmiller says. The hardest part of the last job was installing the SAS expander card. This is probably trivial once you've done it a couple of times, but our guy hadn't done one before and it did involve a call to HP for help. It seems to be a bit like putting an IKEA sofa
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Anyway, I'm done. I've always been pretty open on here about my day job and I thought it would be helpful as there aren't that many end users on ML compared with people working for IT companies. But I'm tired of constantly getting told that I'm doing it all wrong. That my partners are "ripping me off" or that I have "unskilled screwdriver guys that you are paying for Exchange work". I respect different opinions, but opinions are all they are. I've been doing this job for the majority of my working life and I think I do a fine job. I'm going to try shutting up now and hopefully let someone else take the grief for a bit
<throws rest of toys out of pram>
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@scottalanmiller Thanks for clearing that up! It may have been that we were after the remote console. These servers are about 10 years old and the administration at my last job didn't like spending money when IT asked at the time, so that may be why we never got it. I was unaware that ILO, et al did anything other than KVMoIP and Remote DVD.
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller Thanks for clearing that up! It may have been that we were after the remote console. These servers are about 10 years old and the administration at my last job didn't like spending money when IT asked at the time, so that may be why we never got it. I was unaware that ILO, et al did anything other than KVMoIP and Remote DVD.
ILO4, which is much newer than what you have, also adds full remote monitoring capability where you don't even need an HP SIM server to get that data. They keep adding more and more to the ILO.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
Here's an older video on what ILO is and why it is cool.
Thanks. I was more interested in how you would connect, but I'm guessing that you will need VPN access to our LAN. Not a problem, but not trivial either.
But that video is useful. iLO is definitely something I've ignored too long and I've put it on my task list to setup.
VPN or you can punch a hole in the firewall to allow the port through or you can use a jump station like a desktop with LogMeIn, ScreenConnect or similar. VPN is not something I would start with for MSP or MSP-like support until you have dedicated external staff who are full time or nearly full time with you and their machines can be treated as part of your network.
