Best OS for an old PE2550?

[Peter Kjellstrom]

On Sunday 15 July 2007, Brian Hughes wrote:
> New guy here,
>
> I'm a broadcast engineer at Napa Valley College; supporting the
> broadcast engineering program.  We've just received a few PowerEdge
> 2550s, dual Pentium III 1GHz 1GB with PERC 3/Di controller.

This is good enought for the most modern of linux distributions, especially if 
you run it as a typical server without all the heavy gui fluff.

The only problem is the Perc3 which I belive can be a pain in newer dists. I 
have a vague memory of someone saying that if you run it as a scsi controller 
(no raid) then it's easier. Search the mailing list achives.

...
> But about the PE2550s, we'd like to use one of these for a light-duty
> webserver, the other for a training test-bed for networking and such
> for students.  We'd like to run the usual for the webserver, PHP,
> Apache, MySQL, etc.

No problems.

> My question is what is the best and latest OS that will run on these
> units?

Anything will run given that the perc3 can be handled. Otherwise I think that 
the most modern (supported as in security updates) dist that can use the 
Perc3 raid is RHEL3 (you'd probably want a free clone, like centos).

>  From looking at the docs at Dell and searching through these lists
> an older version of Red Hat Linux would be good but I'm not sure how
> new.  Should I consider the Enterprise server versions or stick with
> the older RH Linux 9?

Don't even think about installing something like redhat9. It's old, has no 
security updates available and it is simply a very bad idea. I'd say try 
centos-3.8 (or .9 just about to release) if you want the hw raid (I'd chose 
no) or centos-5.0 (or maybe 4.5).

> It looks like Windows Server 2003 would work, that would make the
> campus IT guys happy, obvious blasphemy on a linux list and I'd
> prefer a *nix variant anyway.  I've seen mention of Fedora, SuSE, etc
> but it looks like there are more issues and/or workarounds required,
> is that right?

I know nothing about suse, but fedora is just too short lived for a server 
imho. You'd have to go with fedora7 (requiring you to sort out the Perc3) and 
then upgrade to fedora8 quite soon-ish (and then 9...).

> Do I need to run/use OMSA?  From an earlier post it looks like I'd
> need version 4.5 or earlier, will 4.5 work?  Anything else I should
> know or read up on to make these useful to a cash-starved college
> program?

I'd say save it for a rainy day or skip it altogether. The main reason to use 
it is, once again imho, if you want to monitor the Perc3 raid or redundant 
PSUs. Either way you can leave it be for now.

> Now about those fibre channel raids, any chance, with the right HBA,
> that the PE2550s will be able to manage and use them?

Yes, no problems. On a reasonably modern linux dist FC is just plug and play 
so to speak.

Good luck,
 Peter

> Thanks,
> Brian Hughes
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