As part of SC’10 Sumavi will be installing the IBM iDataplex demo rack. As such, I got a pair of iDataplex dx360s to install. I fired them up and they both started running. The cool thing about these machines is that they are much quieter than what I remember. The BIOS updates or something must have fixed this. So kudos to that.
The other cool thing about the iDataplex dx360 M2 is that I can just plug it into my wall and it starts booting right away.
But here’s the suckiness:
- Booting up takes forever. This is the same as the HP BL460c G6s I just had. For some reason the industry has decided that longer boot up times may save time somewhere else.
- The BIOS updates are well… not as fast. There were a few times I was waiting.
So those are my initial impressions. Now, the first cool thing to do is the BIOS settings:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/systems/support/system_x/dx360m2_dx360m3-cmos-settings-v1.2.txt
While the boot up will still be slow, with these options in place it seems to go much faster. Since PXE booting is how you manage these things then its a pretty good setup.
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