Taming Servers for Fun and Profit

We’ve all gotten used to clicking a button and getting a Linux machine running in the cloud. But when you’re building your own cloud, you’ve got to build the button first. Lately we’ve been writing about building out our Metal infrastructure one rack at a time. In our last blog, we spoke about the trials of building out the physical infrastructure. In this episode, we talk about how we operationalize the hardware once it’s installed. You’ve built your dream server with dual-redundant NICs and multiple redundant NVMe drives for resilience. You’ve ordered 100 units and got them all racked up and wired to your detailed diagrams. You go to the DC with your USB stick and reboot into your favorite Linux distro’s installer only to be greeted by the “Choose your Network Interface” screen with a dozen or so incomprehensible interface names. Herein lies our first hurdle — how do you map the physical arrangement of hardware to what your operating system sees? A Supermicro server with 12 NVMe ... Read full article.