New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster
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@Pete-S
This is another Scale cluster. This is what it looks like in the system, it's a total across however many nodes you have.
Scale really treats your cluster as a single unit. You can see a little bit on a node by node basis, but very little. It auto balances, auto fails over, and storage is truly a fluid pool across all nodes.
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@scottalanmiller I like scale for what it does. However I think at a certain point if a client wants to manage there own equipment after so many years they should know how to do it.
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OK, I understand. So it's three homogeneous nodes in a cluster with a common "control panel".
If you have the knowledge, why the need for a support contract? If the servers are standard then any hardware failures would be easy to solve or no? And isn't the software proven and stable as is? Or would it too be dangerous to run them without patching?
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@mroth911 said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
@scottalanmiller I like scale for what it does. However I think at a certain point if a client wants to manage there own equipment after so many years they should know how to do it.
This is not a Scale "issue" but one of appliances or not appliances. It's not about knowing how to do it, it's a black box and there isn't anything to know, it's not accessible. Same with any appliance. The thing that makes it powerful for its support and features is also what makes it unable to be managed in other ways. The idea with the appliance model is that when the support agreement expires, the equipment is EOL and automatically retired. Similar to Meraki, Unitrends, etc.
Nothing wrong with that approach, but it means that you have to rule out appliances as a product category as something that you want to work with.
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@Pete-S said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
OK, I understand. So it's three homogeneous nodes in a cluster with a common "control panel".
If you have the knowledge, why the need for a support contract? If the servers are standard then any hardware failures would be easy to solve or no? And isn't the software proven and stable as is? Or would it too be dangerous to run them without patching?
In theory you can run without patching. But... eeek.
It's incredibly stable and really well tested. But the biggest issue is hardware replacements. It's all specially managed drivers and firmware. We aren't sure if he loses a drive if there is anything that he can do to replace it, for example. No one's tried this, but we are pretty sure that a third party drive that isn't from Scale can't be put into the cluster. -
@scottalanmiller agreed, I went with this, based on a recommendation. Haven't had any major issue with it. But I feel its the calm before the storm. And I need to be proactive with not having all my eggs on one basket. I would like to have bought another scale cluster a have a beefed up one that I can run nextcloud on it . but I am not there.
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@scottalanmiller Correction I was able to put on that same model drive. but the system didn't detect it. They had to remote in and enable the port for the drive. But the drive the a bought off of amazon worked.
They wanted to spend 350 for the drive that I paid 98 bucks for . It's a 1tb sas drive.
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@mroth911 said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
@scottalanmiller Correction I was able to put on that same model drive. but the system didn't detect it. They had to remote in and enable the port for the drive. But the drive the a bought off of amazon worked.
They wanted to spend 350 for the drive that I paid 98 bucks for . It's a 1tb sas drive.
Right, I know that THEY can force the acceptance manually. But the cluster itself will not do it, and they likely had to do a manual change of the firmware to get it to work. Firmware that you don't likely have access to.
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@scottalanmiller said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
@mroth911 said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
@scottalanmiller Correction I was able to put on that same model drive. but the system didn't detect it. They had to remote in and enable the port for the drive. But the drive the a bought off of amazon worked.
They wanted to spend 350 for the drive that I paid 98 bucks for . It's a 1tb sas drive.
Right, I know that THEY can force the acceptance manually. But the cluster itself will not do it, and they likely had to do a manual change of the firmware to get it to work. Firmware that you don't likely have access to.
Ah, so basically you are screwed.
Can the hardware itself be sold either as Scale or as generic servers? I mean if you build a replacement cluster can you get some money back?
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@Pete-S I don't know if anyone has attempted to do this.
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@Pete-S said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
@scottalanmiller said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
@mroth911 said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
@scottalanmiller Correction I was able to put on that same model drive. but the system didn't detect it. They had to remote in and enable the port for the drive. But the drive the a bought off of amazon worked.
They wanted to spend 350 for the drive that I paid 98 bucks for . It's a 1tb sas drive.
Right, I know that THEY can force the acceptance manually. But the cluster itself will not do it, and they likely had to do a manual change of the firmware to get it to work. Firmware that you don't likely have access to.
Ah, so basically you are screwed.
Can the hardware itself be sold either as Scale or as generic servers? I mean if you build a replacement cluster can you get some money back?
Yes, basically screwed (if a drive fails) but solid until that time.
Can they be sold? Surely. If you install your own OS on them, they should be just normal servers.
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I wish I can figure out how the os was installed or where it is installed.
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@mroth911 said in New Infrastructure to Replace Scale Cluster:
I wish I can figure out how the os was installed or where it is installed.
There is Linux and KVM installed on all three nodes. It would be local on the drives, but not on visible parts of the drives.
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yeah there is 1 512gb ssd on port 0 and 3 1tb sas .. Its 4 bay
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has anyone ever heard of the software Maxtra
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So technically you could build your own cluster with the older machines you have. Get it up and running asap.
Move VMs and then repurpose the Scale computers to your own cluster or possibly sell them.If you have your own fiber I assume you have the rack space to put everything in as well.
You could probably pick up a spare empty R710 second hand for very little money. Then you have spare power supplies, fans, motherboard and whatever else you need to get by with the R710s for a while. Assuming you know how to troubleshoot and replace stuff that breaks.
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@Pete-S I have 6 dell r710 already. I have a 42u rack with apc 6000 xl and hp r2000,
plus the scale. and an hp d2d4324 24tb backup system.
and 3 node cluster 1150 from scale.
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@mroth911 How many cores, RAM etc do you have on the R710s?
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2x 6 core 72gb of ram. I just installed ovirt with 2x 300gb sas, as os, with 4tb storage. on each server
