Looking for some community help

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Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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Hey STH community,

Looking for a bit of help here primarily because I got home late last night and I woke up at 3AM so I am not at my normal functional level.

The TL;DR ask: Has anyone seen an organization that is doing in-depth server management comparisons?

Monday I was hiking the Pacaya volcano in Guatemala. It was an awesome experience as I never thought I would get that close to smoking lava rock just jettisoned from an active volcano. During the hike, I was thinking about some content ideas. One that I had was centered around doing some in-depth work with server management interfaces.

Just looking around the lab, and what is inbound, we have the following vendors represented:
  • Dell EMC
  • HPE
  • Lenovo
  • Supermicro
  • Intel
  • Inspur
  • Cisco UCS
  • Gigabyte
  • Tyan
That is a fairly good chunk of the x86 server landscape. Many we have both Intel Xeon Scalable as well as AMD EPYC platforms.

An idea I had was around creating an in-depth buyer's guide for IMPI/iDRAC/iLO and etc. management. I think this is something that will take a lot of time to do, and it may require hiring someone full-time or near full-time for a few months. As a result, I do not think the small bit we get in advertising revenue per piece will cover the content creation costs.

The model may end up being a free overview piece on STH, then a paid downloadable report or reports comparing the solutions.

My sense is that this is a valuable activity, so I am willing to invest in it. Doing a bit of research today I did not find anything online that is trying to do a similar comparison.

Has anyone come across something like this? If there is an organization out there doing a good job at creating similar content, then that will change my outlook on investing.

A bigger value is being able to go up-market and doing the infrastructure management tools, but there seems to be more content on that aspect.
 
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Blinky 42

Active Member
Aug 6, 2015
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I have not seen a side by side comparison on the management side either, at least in normal online and formerly print publications.
The most I recall is system under test vs DRAC or iLO as a common reference point. There may be a comparison out there in the paid-content world but never looked.
Possibly include it as part of Demo Eval subscriptions like a light review the management interfaces out there but keep it up to date as the vendors release changes?
 
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Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
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Have done it with upto 4 vendors internally based on those 4 vendors being narrowed down already by other creiteria.

I am not sure if the value is huge as I was under the impression for the most part the server management was similar ??

Yes I know a Dell is different from a Cisco or HPE or Supermicro but they generally are all providing similar functions (some have license that costs $$ though)

Right now just trying to think who would be paying for this.
 

Monoman

Active Member
Oct 16, 2013
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I've created a piece of software that controls the entire data center via ipmi, you can startup and shutdown, and poll ipmi commands and such . It was a WIP when I left sadly...
 

DavidRa

Infrastructure Architect
Aug 3, 2015
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Central Coast of NSW
www.pdconsec.net
So my sense of this is that the choice of server management is pretty much irrelevant. Organisations almost always have exclusive contracts with vendors - and that means that all the servers are HP or Dell or others - and which management platform is better never enters into discussion. It just can't really drive anything - unfortunately the choice of server management isn't independent, which would make a report like this more useful. The level of integration required is such that I suspect you'll never be able to plug an iDRAC into a SuperMicro server (or there'd be a vendor offering a kit like Compaq's original remote management cards).