[Beowulf] dual Opteron recommendations

[Mark Hahn]

> Oh, speaking of which the main advantage I've seen in the newisys is
> the remote managability.  You can ssh to the management interface, check
> temperatures, turn the machine on/off, and other related functionality.

this is not newisis-specific, of course!  we've got a cluster of 
HP DL145's (which look a LOT like Celestica a2210's).  they have 
a nice lan-enabled IPMI card, which you can telnet to or use 
the reasonably secure IPMItools.  HP certainly has ssh on other of 
their products (switches, for instance), so I'd expect them to 
add ssh support everywhere.

> Alas, as far as I can tell the passthru for the management interface
> (it has 2 ethernet ports for the management) isn't usable in any sane way.

ipmitools seem to work nicely.  I've got an perl/expect script for 
dealing with the telnet interface, if anyone wants it.

> The idea of not requiring a masterswitch+ for power management, a
> cyclades or similar for serial management, or a switch for a seperate

decent IPMI support obsoletes all that junk.  the DL145 gives you 
working bios redirection, as well as power control, warm/cold reset,
lm_sensors-type data, etc.

we're requiring this kind of remote management in all future purposes,
and I'm convinced everyone doing clusters should do so as well.

regards, mark hahn.