HP Integrity BL860c Server Blade Linux Installation white paper

Introduction
Abstract
The HP Integrity BL860c Server Blade introduces the advantages of HP Integrity servers to the
HP BladeSystem c-Class series technology. This white paper describes how to install the supported
Linux distributions on HP Integrity BL860c Server Blades. The supported Linux distributions
are:
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4 (RHEL4U4)
• Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES10)
Both Linux distributions support installations using physical media or a network repository.
You can make the physical media or an image of the physical media available using any of the
following:
– a USB DVD (the HP MultiBay 9.5mm DVD+/-RW Drive [PA851A] with the USB External
MultiBay Cradle [PA509A]),
– a hard disk partition,
– or virtual media using the Integrated Lights-Out 2 Management Processor (iLO 2 MP).
Network installations can use the HTTP, NFS, or FTP protocols from an installation repository
on an operational server. The following sections describe the following topics:
• “Preparing to Install Linux” (page 6)
• “Installing Linux” (page 9)
• “Optional Activities” (page 17)
Preparing to Install Linux
This section describes how to prepare to install Linux on a BL860c server blade.
Racking, Cabling, and Firmware
The BL860c server blade is a full-height server blade designed for the standard BladeSystem
c-Class enclosure and slides into any open slot in the enclosure. Once added to the enclosure,
the server blade should go to standby power. The server blade is at standby power if the health
LED is amber. If the system health LED turns green and the fan noise gets louder, then the server
blade has powered on automatically. You can depress the power button to change to the standby
state.
The BL860c server blade includes 4 integrated 1Gb ethernet interfaces that map to ports on the
rear of the BladeSystem c-Class enclosure for connecting to the customer network. The mapping
of ethernet interfaces to BladeSystem c-Class enclosure ports depends on the type of interconnect
modules in the enclosure. For additional details, see Installation Guide: HP Integrity BL860c Server
Blade.
The most current firmware can be installed on the BL860c server blade using the HP Integrity
Essentials Foundation Pack for Linux (HPIEFPL) Smart Setup utility, which will also update the
I/O firmware. The HPIEFPL Smart Setup utility is available for download at:
http://www.hp.com/go/integritylinuxessentials
Console Output
Console output is provided either over the serial port on the serial, USB, and video (SUV) cable
as shown in Figure 1 or using a remote console through the iLO 2 MP.
Introduction 6