e i g h t - c u b e d . c o m 

Rack and stack, part 2

Sorry for the lack of entries on here. I've been busy building this room. The majority of the equipment that will end up in the room is brand spanking new kit. All of this has now been racked and cabled, with the exception of some stuff that is lacking cables that the project manager overlooked and failed to order. Fortunately, most of that gear is not required for the first part of the relocation. The rest of the kit is old gear that will be physically relocated from the old room to the new room. This includes the OpenVMS CPUs.

We have just done a transfer test to prove replication on the VMware side, where Mike went beyond the call and worked four days straight. Now that we are passed this, we are working on getting the SAN replication to work over the high speed links. Once this is in place (and some pesky firmware downgraded then upgraded again) we can test the OpenVMS stuff.

Then it's just a matter of making the transfer happen for real. In the case of the OpenVMS stuff, that's two consecutive weekends, the first to move development, and the second to move production.

Because development and production are both based on HP's blade systems, the first weekend is basically a dress rehearsal for the second weekend.

The way this will work is that the data will be replicated to the new DC via SAN replication, the machines will be shut down, and then the CPUs will be physically moved. Once in place, the machines can be booted off the replicated data. As we move, I'll report status here.

I'll also add some photos of the new racks to this post shortly...