Hardware

uniPHARM purchased a pair of Lenovo x3650 M5 servers in March of 2018 from Anisoft to act as hosts for VMware. The machine type of both servers is 8871-16A and the serial numbers are J121W8C and J121W8D. Both servers do have identical hardware components and as of March 2018, they also have identical and current firmware. Both servers have an Intel Xeon E5-2620 v4 processor populating the first socket. The second socket for both servers is empty. The Xeon has 8 cores and 16 threads. Both machines came with an initial 16GB stick of memory in the first slot. An additional 6 sticks of 8GB were installed into each server so that each has 64GBs of memory. Be aware that the motherboard has specific requirements for where additional memory can be inserted. The numerical order for which memory slots can be used is clearly displayed on the top side lid of the server. If more memory is purchased and installed for these servers, the instructions on the top lid must be followed, or the memory will not be recognized correctly. The memory slots labeled from 13 to 24 on the motherboard cannot be used until the second CPU socket has a processor.

Each server has an ServeRAID M5210 controller that is attached to the motherboard. For each M5210, there is also a RAID5 daughter card that is attached which provides additional capabilities. The M5210 can control up to 24 drives for each server. The initial purchase included 5 drives for each server that are 960GB SSDs. Both of the M5210 controllers are configured with a RAID6 set containing the 5 SSDs. The RAID6 volume can survive the failure of 2 drives before there is data loss. There are no warm or cold spare drives available as of March 2018. The total amount of storage space on each server is 2679GB. Each server also has a USB thumb drive that is plugged into the motherboard where the hypervisor software is installed.

Each server has 4 network ports that use the Broadcom NetXtreme chip. Each server has an additional network port that is for dedicated IMM2 access. More on the IMM2 is below. Each server has 2 USB and a VGA port on the front side and the back side. The purchased configuration of each server did not include any riser cards for PCIe expansion cards so if there is a need for extra abilities, the riser cards are also required. Each server has 2 power supplies which can share the load as well as take the entire electrical load should 1 fail.

Both servers are located in the Power8 rack and are 2U in size. The top server is at rack unit 18 and the bottom server is at rack unit 16. Both servers can be pulled out on the rack rails and serviced while powered on. The hard drives and power supplies are hot swappable but the memory is not.

Hardware Support

uniPHARM has a hardware maintenance contract with Lenovo to provide 24x7x365 onsite parts and labour with a 4 hour response time for the period of March 6, 2018 to March 5, 2021. A renewal of this maintenance contract is expected in February of 2021 because the expected life span of these servers is 5 to 6 years. Note that "maintenance" is not a good descriptor of the service. If a hardware component fails, then the replacement of that part is provided by Lenovo at no cost and is installed by a Lenovo technician at no cost. If uniPHARM adds in non-Lenovo parts they are not covered by the existing contract. Additional Lenovo branded parts that are installed after initial purchase are covered under the existing contract. If a non-Lenovo part is installed and causes damage to the server, the agreement becomes null and void. The phone number for parts replacement and technical support under this contract is 1-800-426-7378. This contract does not cover any VMware software.

IMM2

Describe how to get into the IMM2 and what it can do

vSphere Hypervisor

Describe the installation of ESX

vCenter Appliance

Describe the setup and installation and access to vCenter

vCenter Management

Describe the datacenters and datastores and how vCenter is organized. Describe how alerting is setup as well as licensing.

Virtual Machines

Describe what how a virtual machine is a container and that we have a bunch, the details of each VM will be in subtopics

VCSA

Short description to close loop on the vCenter appliance

XClarity

Appliance VM that replaces IBM Director