CentOS 7.8 on DELL R740XD

[steve.harder]

Hi all,

I'm scheduled to reinstall CentOS on 4 servers, DELL R740XD at work abroad.
Few years ago the team that installed the CentOS (currently 7.3) recall having a nightmare installing the OS and it was not a seamless process
I was wondering if you guys can recall if installing CentOS 7.8 minimal will have any issues with DELL R740XD, any HBA drivers etc...

I see on DELL site support only for RHEL and not CentOS
Any advice ahead of time will be appreciated

Thanks,

[BShT]

centOS 7 will die in less than a year, look for another distro and centOS 7 is a clone of RHEL 7, what works on RHEL 7 works on centOS 7

[TrevorH]

Don't use 7.8 when 7.9 is available. 7.9 is the latest and last release of CentOS 7 and came out at the end of 2020 so it's already going on for 3 years old so there is no excuse for not using the latest. It's more likely to work than earlier releases as it will contain the latest drivers etc. I'd actually recommend using the latest iso too as it's been updated since the 2020 release

https://buildlogs.centos.org/monthly/7/ ... 207-02.iso

I've installed CentOS 7 on numerous Dell PowerEdge servers and it's usually easy. Make sure that in your iDRAC you have the remove console set to HTML5 mode and not the default of eHTML5 as I found that did not work for me.

It does only have about 10 months of life left though so you might want to reconsider what it is that you are installing and whether to find something with more life left.

[steve.harder]

Don't use 7.8 when 7.9 is available. 7.9 is the latest and last release of CentOS 7 and came out at the end of 2020 so it's already going on for 3 years old so there is no excuse for not using the latest. It's more likely to work than earlier releases as it will contain the latest drivers etc. I'd actually recommend using the latest iso too as it's been updated since the 2020 release

https://buildlogs.centos.org/monthly/7/ ... 207-02.iso

I've installed CentOS 7 on numerous Dell PowerEdge servers and it's usually easy. Make sure that in your iDRAC you have the remove console set to HTML5 mode and not the default of eHTML5 as I found that did not work for me.

It does only have about 10 months of life left though so you might want to reconsider what it is that you are installing and whether to find something with more life left.

Thank you the reply,

We have limitation by Vertica specific DB version limited to CentOS 7.8 but I'm sure it will work on 7.9 as well
Moving to RHEL will be considered later on this year but we can't jump into it before we test the setup
I will definitely recommend on latest 7.9 ISO

Thanks for the tip with HTML5

[TrevorH]

For $$$ (or more likely $$$$), you can sign up for an EUS RHEL subscription and receive security updates for RHEL 7 past its sell-by-date. That would enable you to run RHEL 7 on there for another few years. That's not something you can do with CentOS because the source for those updates is not published by RH (and in any case they've already made it perfectly clear that they want CentOS to go away as quickly as possible).

[steve.harder]

For $$$ (or more likely $$$$), you can sign up for an EUS RHEL subscription and receive security updates for RHEL 7 past its sell-by-date. That would enable you to run RHEL 7 on there for another few years. That's not something you can do with CentOS because the source for those updates is not published by RH (and in any case they've already made it perfectly clear that they want CentOS to go away as quickly as possible).

Yes that will be our next step...

[jlehtone]

Few years ago the team that installed the CentOS (currently 7.3) recall having a nightmare installing the OS and it was not a seamless process
I was wondering if you guys can recall if installing CentOS 7.8 minimal will have any issues with DELL R740XD, any HBA drivers etc...

I've seen install on R740XD (and other R*40 series) in 2019, so CentOS version must have been 7.6 or 7.7. No "incidents", IIRC.


RHEL 7 is currently in "Maintenance Support 2" and should have ELS* after that: https://access.redhat.com/support/polic ... es/errata/
RHEL 7.7 was the last with EUS; RHEL 7.8 had none and ELS is for the 7.9: https://access.redhat.com/articles/4038 ... -linux-7-6

*ELS: Extended Life-cycle Support

We have limitation by Vertica specific DB version limited to CentOS 7.8

These are always "fun"/bizarre. RHEL has multiple levels of compatibility: https://access.redhat.com/articles/rhel ... patibility
Therefore, most applications should be ok with many RHEL (point) releases.
On the other hand, a commercial vendor obviously does not desire liability (but has some for versions that they have thoroughly tested).
It is cheaper to test with only one, short-lived version?

[steve.harder]

Few years ago the team that installed the CentOS (currently 7.3) recall having a nightmare installing the OS and it was not a seamless process
I was wondering if you guys can recall if installing CentOS 7.8 minimal will have any issues with DELL R740XD, any HBA drivers etc...

I've seen install on R740XD (and other R*40 series) in 2019, so CentOS version must have been 7.6 or 7.7. No "incidents", IIRC.


RHEL 7 is currently in "Maintenance Support 2" and should have ELS* after that: https://access.redhat.com/support/polic ... es/errata/
RHEL 7.7 was the last with EUS; RHEL 7.8 had none and ELS is for the 7.9: https://access.redhat.com/articles/4038 ... -linux-7-6

*ELS: Extended Life-cycle Support

We have limitation by Vertica specific DB version limited to CentOS 7.8

These are always "fun"/bizarre. RHEL has multiple levels of compatibility: https://access.redhat.com/articles/rhel ... patibility
Therefore, most applications should be ok with many RHEL (point) releases.
On the other hand, a commercial vendor obviously does not desire liability (but has some for versions that they have thoroughly tested).
It is cheaper to test with only one, short-lived version?

Thanks for the update...