Has anybody installed CentOS 8 on an IBM X3650 M4?

[DrDave]

I have an old IBM x3650 2U rack server. Trying to install CentOs 8 on that looks to be problematic at best (RAID controller not supported). I'm thinking of getting the later version of that range, the IBM X3650 M4, which can be picked up fairly cheaply. That would have several advantages

* Less ancient (only old, not very very old!)
* Supports more RAM - I believe 512 GB.
* Better CPUs available - I think one can have 20 cores in that, even if not officially supported.

All quite desirable features to me, on a unit that does not cost a fortune. (Although 10-core CPUs are not cheap).

However, before I shell out some pennies, I wonder if anyone has any experience of installing CentOS 8 on one? I see some concerns about the RAID controller for CentOS 7 expressed here

viewtopic.php?t=51813&p=220295

on the IBM x3650 (not the M4). However, I think they are unfounded. I've got CentOS 7 installed on the even older X3650 server (not M4), so I don't see why the M4 should be a problem. In any case, reading that, the Redhat 7.1 run on the M4 version.

I'm just wondering if CentOS 8 will go on the X3650 M4.

I also need to check if my software supports CentOS 6, 7 or 8. That will be crucial. It is officially only supported on Redhat 4 and 5, but I know it works on CentOS 5, after I frigged one of the files to fool the software the operating system was Redhat 5, even though it was not.

I think what I might do if I go this route, is buy one with the bare minimum of hardware (ie. very cheap), test out the OS and software, and if they work, then upgrade to faster CPUs, more RAM etc.

Dave

[mathog]

I went through something similar recently - that machine ended up running Ubuntu 18.04 because not even ElRepo had a driver (sata_sil24) for its SATA controller. Also it is becoming increasingly clear to me that Ubuntu now has vastly better support for old hardware than does RedHat. I prefer to use RH derivatives but damn, for the old machine I was working on I would have had to build a custom kernel to run, and install it who knows how, whereas the Xubuntu mini installer just worked, with no special sauce required at all.

Anyway, if you intend to press on with CentOS 8, review this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=54&t=73634

I suggest you boot your target machine with a live CD/DVD/USB key (any that works) and then use "lspci -k" or "lspci -v" to see which drivers are associated with which hardware. Then check the Red Hat "we don't support this anymore" page mentioned in the link above. If any of the drivers you see running are listed there then you need to check ElRepo to see if they have it, in which case the driver can be added during the install. CentOS has a special kernel with some of these extras too, but it isn't an option during an install, you need to have a running CentOS system to get to it. Which is very much a catch-22 sort of situation.

Good luck!

[DrDave]

Thank you for the link. That script looks useful.

The lack of drivers for older hardware does seem an annoying problem to me. I don’t know why Redhat just don’t leave them there as unsupported. Perhaps they have shares in computer hardware manufacturers.

I can’t get the software to run on CentOS 7, so I might have to go all the way back to CentOS 5, but I will try 6 before going back to 5.

I did buy a X3650 M4 yesterday, based on the facts that

* Redhat 5, 6 & 7 support the server
* The software supports Redhat 4 & 5
* I have run the software on CentOS 5 in the past, on the older X3650 (not the M4).

I an now kicking myself as I paid £200 for the server, plus another £171 to double the RAM from 64 GB to 128 GB. I would have rather bought two servers and pulled the memory from one to fit in the other. For an extra £29 I would have had a spare server! I am going to phone up today and see if I can amend the order. Unless they had to fit larger DIMMs for 128 GB RAM, I scored an own-goal there.

The CPUs are not the fastest that will fit in the machine, but they are quicker than anything else I have. I will worry about changing to larger memory modules should the need arise. The machine supports up to 768 GB.

I now have another annoying problem. I bought a couple of 600 GB disks to go in my original X3650. The RAID controller detected them, but says that they are unsupported and can’t do anything with them. I hope they will work in the newer M4 version.

Dave

[mathog]

I now have another annoying problem. I bought a couple of 600 GB disks to go in my original X3650. The RAID controller detected them, but says that they are unsupported and can’t do anything with them. I hope they will work in the newer M4 version.

Correct disk type? Some RAID does SATA, some SAS, some do both, but not mixed. Any improper combination causes problems. Is there data already on the disks? If so the RAID controller may refuse to deal with them and give a mysterious message rather than "unrecognized disk data format". If that is the problem put them in another machine and use "dd" to zero them. Typically only the front and back 1GB or so of the storage space needs to be wiped, but if they are used disks it is a good idea to zero the entire storage space, then use smartctl to check their status.

[DrDave]

The old X3650 RAID controller supports both SAS and SATA. I did have 6 x SAS & 2 x SATA. One thing one can’t mix is a SATA and a SAS in the same array. I wanted to get rid of two of the SATA disks, so bought the SAS disks, but I cannot get them to work.

Since I have ordered an X3650 M4, I will see if the disks work in the X3650 M4. I believe the M4 has a different RAID controller to the older model. If not, I will try zeroing them.

I will probably retire the old, first generation X3650. The maximum RAM it can accept is 48 GB, and that’s insufficient for my needs. It still has value, so I will sell it.