Archive:Equipment/Borg

Borg
Model	IBM 3950 M2
Sub-category	Systems
Status	Under Construction
Accessories	Bits
Training requirement	yes
ACnode	no
Owner	Hackspace
Origin	Donation
Location	Basement rack
Maintainers	Oni, Tgreer

Borg is a virtual host server to be used to give members access to virtual machines in the space and ultimately replace many if not all the functions of Babbage.

Naming

We are naming this machine after Anita Borg. Also the Borg.

They're currently labeled as BORG1 through BORG6 from bottom to top.

Access

Currently connected to the SPC1601 PDU, we need a better way of adding accounts.

Specs

IBM 3950 M2

• 16 cores total
  • 4 x Xeon 7330: 4 cores @ 2.4 GHz "Tigerton" Intel Ark spec sheet
• 128 GB ram

• BORG1 - 3 CPUs, 8GB RAM
• BORG2 - 3 CPUs, 8GB RAM
• BORG3 - 4 CPUs, 128GB RAM - has bios A3E170AUS-1.16
• BORG4 - 4 CPUs, 128GB RAM
• BORG5 - 4 CPUs, 128GB RAM
• BORG6 - 3 CPUs, 128GB RAM

IP

172.31.24.11

BIOS

With dmidecode

* Borg3 Version A3E170AUS-1.16
* Borg5 Version 1.16

ScaleXpandr

In order to link upto 4 borgs together we need to use the special cables. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg247630.pdf - page 235 shows how this is done to create an SMP style set of nodes.

Logbook

Borg/LogBook

Running Debian

• Needs the non-free bnx2 firmware on a flash drive for the install to work, (could try to add it to the install initrd)
• Something something IBM Calgary IOMMU something something leads to DMA errors and the LSI MegaRaid raid card dosn't work, booting with "iommu=soft" makes it work but may not be ideal. search https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/x86/x86_64/boot-options.txt for iommu
• The incantation seems to be: iommu=soft,calgary megaraid_sas.msix_disable=1

Upgrading the bios

Do a diskless boot, the go do Debian and then "Jessie amd64 Diskless for BORGs", log in as root (password 'root', this diskless setup is for testing only!), then:

cd ibm-bios/z/ ./lflash64

This is an upgrade to bios version 1.16

We also need to upgrade:

The RSA II thing: https://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?lndocid=MIGR-5086633 The FPGA (in the scaleXpander?) The BMC

We might be able to do it individually, or perhaps use the IBM UpdateXpress thing, which needs SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 x86-64 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 x86-64.

We need to reset all the bios etc settings to there defaults.

link dump

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/343749
• http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?lndocid=migr-5083138
• http://dump.asiantuntijakaveri.fi/le_bueno_dumpo/lsi/
• https://wiki.debian.org/LinuxRaidForAdmins
• http://hwraid.le-vert.net/wiki/DebianPackages

good megaraid cli guide:

• http://hwraid.le-vert.net/wiki/LSIMegaRAIDSAS
• http://www.linuxsa.org.au/pipermail/linuxsa/2011-November/094772.html

reflashing?!?:

• http://blog.asiantuntijakaveri.fi/2013/09/reflashing-lsi-megaraid-sas-8708elp.html

Birth

It is reasonable to say the birth of Borg has been long and difficult, concern has generally revolved around the 3 areas:

1. Usage
2. Energy Consumption
3. Location

Each have been discussed on the mailing list but for summary.

Energy Consumption

Borg (being a server) could add substantially to our electricity costs. To help this we can offset some of it by the retiring of other machines in the space. It has also been agreed that if it takes up more than 275W regularly then a decision about Borgs future will have to be made. If it goes over 300W we will have to re-think our strategy. These figures are a maximum and equate to about £27 per month in electricity costs. The power consumption will be regularly measured and anyone is welcome to report power consumption levels.

Location

The Rack in the basement.

Potential uses

• Rendering video and 3D
• Bio-informatics number crunching (bio-hackers?)
• simulation
• realtime ray-tracing
• Radio FFT decoding in real-time (Cubesat related)

Current VMs

Please keep this list up to date of virtual machines on Borg. If a machine is created but is not in this list it is liable to be switched off without warning.

Name	Use	Owner
ExampleMachine	For displaying an example item in this table. Please be descriptive.	Cotten Eye Joe