Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, February 2005. Copyright © 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

EDITOR’S COMMENTS

6 Tooling Up for Change Management By Tom Kolnowski

EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS

8 Maximizing Manageability Across

the Scalable Enterprise An interview with Rhonda Holt, vice president of systems management

software at Dell

NEW-GENERATION SERVER TECHNOLOGY

14 Systems Management Techniques for the

Dell PowerEdge 1855 Blade Server By Steven Grigsby and Narayan Devireddy

18 Remotely Managing the Dell PowerEdge 1855

Blade Server Using the DRAC/MC By Michael Brundridge and Ryan Putman

24 Enhancing Network Availability and Performance

on the Dell PowerEdge 1855 Blade Server

Using Network Teaming By Mike J. Roberts, Doug Wallingford, and Balaji Mittapalli

30 VMware Virtualization Software

on Dell Blade Servers By Balasubramanian Chandrasekaran and Simone Shumate

32 Efficient BMC Configuration on Dell PowerEdge Servers

Using the Dell Deployment Toolkit By Anusha Ragunathan, Alan Brumley, and Ruoting Huang

37 Remote OS Deployment Using Dell OpenManage

Server Assistant 8 and DRAC 4 By Michael E. Brown, Manoj Gujarathi, and Gong Wang

41 Migrating Enterprise Databases from Sun Servers

to the Dell PowerEdge 2850 Running

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 By Todd Muirhead and Dave Jaffe, Ph.D.

46 Managing Dell PowerEdge Server Alerts

Using Dell OpenManage Server Administrator By Haihong Zhuo, Michael O’Hara, and Jianwen Yin, Ph.D.

SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT

51 Deploying Dell Update Packages Using

Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 By Sandeep Karandikar and Manoj Gujarathi

58 Managing Dell Client Systems with

Enterprise Management Solutions By Jim Lathan

62 Agentless Monitoring of Dell PowerEdge Servers

Using Mercury SiteScope By Bill Fitzgerald and Bob Ure

POWERSOLUTIONST H E M A G A Z I N E F O R D I R E C T E N T E R P R I S E S O L U T I O N S

FEBRUARY 2005

COVER STORY | PAGE 10

Managing Change ThroughIndustry-Standard Technologies

By Paul Laster

Dell OpenManage 4 infrastructure and the recently announced

Dell OpenManage change management capability utilize industry-

standard technologies to provide extended systems management

functionality across the enterprise.

g

STORAGE

67 Exploring Enhanced Technologies in the

VERITAS Backup Exec Suite By Mike Garcia and Michael Parker

71 Enhancing Backup and Recovery Using Dell PowerVault

Storage Powered by CommVault Galaxy By Joe Pollock and Casey Burns

75 Branch Office Data Consolidation: Helping to Reduce Costs

and Increase Data Protection By Joe Pollock

79 Efficient Bare-Metal Disaster Recovery

from Yosemite Technologies By Eric Harless

SCALABLE ENTERPRISE

82 File Systems for the Scalable Enterprise By David Weber, Roger Goff, and Suri Brahmaroutu

86 The Promise of Unified I/O Fabrics By J. Craig Lowery, Ph.D., and David Schmidt

91 Progressive Degrees of Automation Toward

the Virtual Data Center By Jimmy Pike and Tim Abels

94 Deploying and Managing Oracle RAC with

Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Controlg By Rudramuni B, C.S. Prasanna Nanda, and Uday Datta Shet

98 Exploiting Automated Database Diagnostics

in Oracle Database 10g By Ramesh Rajagopalan, Uday Datta Shet, C.S. Prasanna Nanda, and Bharat Sajnani

102 Migrating Oracle Database 10g from Sun Serversgto Dell Servers

By Todd Muirhead; Dave Jaffe, Ph.D.; and Paul Rad

107 Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Scale-Out Performance

on a Dell PowerEdge High-Availability Cluster By Arrian Mehis, Ananda Sankaran, and Scott Stanford

THE MAGAZINE FOR DIRECT ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS

POWERSOLUTIONSWWW.DELL.COM/POWERSOLUTIONS

EDITORIAL

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF | Tom Kolnowski

MANAGING EDITOR | Debra McDonald

SENIOR EDITORS | Liza Graffeo, Cathy Luo, Anthony Poliseno, Vicki Van Ausdall

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS | Tim Abels; Rizwan Ali; Rudramuni B; John Benninghoff; Suri

Brahmaroutu; Michael E. Brown; Alan Brumley; Michael Brundridge; Casey Burns; Onur

Celebioglu; Kalyana Chadalavada; Balasubramanian Chandrasekaran; Narayan Devireddy;

Yung-Chin Fang; Bill Fitzgerald; Mike Garcia; Roger Goff; Steven Grigsby; Manoj Gujarathi;

Baris Guler; Rinku Gupta; Eric Harless; Jenwei Hsieh, Ph.D.; Ruoting Huang; Munira

Hussain; Saeed Iqbal, Ph.D.; Dave Jaffe, Ph.D.; Rajiv Kapoor; Sandeep Karandikar;

Monica Kashyap; Garima Kochhar; Paul Laster; Jim Lathan; J. Craig Lowery, Ph.D.;

Arrian Mehis; Balaji Mittapalli; Todd Muirhead; C.S. Prasanna Nanda; Srivathsa NS;

Michael O’Hara; Michael Parker; Komal Patel; Ron Pepper; Jimmy Pike; Joe Pollock;

Ryan Putman; Paul Rad; Ramesh Radhakrishnan, Ph.D.; Anusha Ragunathan; Ramesh

Rajagopalan; Mike J. Roberts; Amina Saify; Bharat Sajnani; Ananda Sankaran; David

Schmidt; Uday Datta Shet; Lance Shuler; Simone Shumate; Pramada Singireddy; Sudhir

Srinivasan, Ph.D.; Scott Stanford; Bob Ure; Doug Wallingford; Gong Wang; David Weber;

Yi-Ming Xiong, Ph.D.; Jianwen Yin, Ph.D.; and Haihong Zhuo

ART

ART DIRECTOR | Mark Mastroianni

DESIGNER AND ILLUSTRATOR | Cynthia Webb

COVER DESIGN | Mark Mastroianni

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER | Lee Kirgan

ONLINE

WEB PRODUCTION | Brad Klenzendorf

SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

CIRCULATION | Sheryl Williams

Subscriptions are free to qualified readers who complete the online subscription form or the subscrip-tion reply form on page 74 in this issue. To sign up as a new subscriber, renew an existing subscription,change your address, or cancel your subscription, submit the online subscription form at www.

dell.com/powersolutions_subscribe, return the subscription reply form by surface mail,or fax the subscription reply form to +1 512.283.0363. For subscription services, please e-mailus_power_solutions@dell.com.

ABOUT DELL

Dell Inc., headquartered in Round Rock, Texas, near Austin, is the world’s leading direct computersystems company. Dell is one of the fastest growing among all major computer systems companiesworldwide, with approximately 47,800 employees around the globe. Dell uses the direct businessmodel to sell its high-performance computer systems, workstations, and storage products to alltypes of enterprises. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.dell.com.

Dell, the Dell logo, Dell OpenManage, Dell Precision, Latitude, OptiPlex, PowerConnect, PowerEdge,and PowerVault are trademarks of Dell Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both. Othercompany, product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

Dell Power Solutions is published quarterly by the Dell Product Group, Dell Inc.s Dell Power Solutions, Mailstop 8456, Dell Inc., One Dell Way, Round Rock, TX 78682, U.S.A. This publication is also avail-able online at www.dell.com/powersolutions. No part of this publication may be reprintedor otherwise reproduced without permission from the Editor-in-Chief. Dell does not provide anywarranty as to the accuracy of any information provided through Dell Power Solutions. Opinionsexpressed in this magazine may not be those of Dell. The information in this publication is subjectto change without notice. Any reliance by the end user on the information contained herein is atthe end user’s risk. Dell will not be liable for information in any way, including but not limitedto its accuracy or completeness. Dell does not accept responsibility for the advertising contentof the magazine or for any claims, actions, or losses arising therefrom. Goods, services, and/oradvertisements within this publication other than those of Dell are not endorsed by or in any wayconnected with Dell Inc.

ON THE FRONT COVER | The Dell PowerEdge 1855 blade server.

Copyright © 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

February 2005

O CO STABLE OF CONTENTS

We welcome your questions, comments,

and suggestions. Please send your feedback

to the Dell Power Solutions editorial team s

at us_power_solutions@dell.com.

TALK BACK

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, February 2005. Copyright © 22005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

WWW.DELL.COM/

POWERSOLUTIONS

Troubleshooting Enterprise Production

Environments Using Dell Server

Diagnostic Tools

By Komal Patel and Pramada Singireddy

Dell server diagnostic tools are engineered to augment fault isolation and root-cause

analysis in enterprise production environments. This article discusses various tools

available for server diagnostics at the tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 levels, along with best

practices for the use of server diagnostic tools.

Evaluating File-Serving Performance of

the Dell PowerEdge 700 Server

By Yi-Ming Xiong, Ph.D.

The Dell PowerEdge 700 demonstrated a considerable

performance gain compared to its predecessor, the PowerEdge 600SC, when Dell

engineers measured its file-serving performance using Ziff Davis NetBench. This arti-

cle explains the findings of this comparison test, including results for CPU frequency,

cache size, and memory size tests performed on the PowerEdge 700 server.

Understanding Performance of Molecular

Dynamics and Quantum Mechanics

Applications on Dell HPC Clusters

By Kalyana Chadalavada and Srivathsa NS

High-performance computing (HPC) clusters are proving to be suitable environ-

ments for running a wide range of parallel-processing applications. This article

discusses the performance and scalability of two domain-specific scientific

applications—NAMD (for molecular dynamics) and DFT++ (density-functional

theory)—on a Dell PowerEdge HPC cluster running Linux.

Considering Middleware Options

in High-Performance Computing Clusters

By Rinku Gupta, Monica Kashyap, Yung-Chin Fang,

and Saeed Iqbal, Ph.D.

Middleware is a critical component for the development and porting of parallel-

processing applications in distributed HPC cluster infrastructures. This article

describes the evolution of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard specifica-

tion as well as both open source and commercial MPI implementations that can be

used to enhance Dell HPC cluster environments.

Altiris Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Avocent Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

CommVault . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Dell Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29, 65, 69, 77

Emulex Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Enterasys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Intel Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C2

McDATA Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Microsoft Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Novell, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C4

Oracle Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3

QLogic Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Quantum DLTtape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

VERITAS Software Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

ADVERTISER INDEX

HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING

111 Streamlining Beowulf Cluster Deployment

with NPACI Rocks By Rinku Gupta, Yung-Chin Fang, and Munira Hussain

115 Designing High-Performance Clusters

with the Dell PowerEdge SC1425 Server By Ron Pepper and Rinku Gupta

119 Performance Characterization of BLAST

on 32-bit and 64-bit Dell PowerEdge Servers By Ramesh Radhakrishnan, Ph.D.; Rizwan Ali; Garima Kochhar;

Kalyana Chadalavada; and Ramesh Rajagopalan

123 Getting the Best Performance from an HPC Cluster:

A STAR-CD Case Study By Baris Guler; Jenwei Hsieh, Ph.D.; Rajiv Kapoor; Lance Shuler;

and John Benninghoff

128 Achieving Scalable I/O Performance

in High-Performance Computing Environments By Amina Saify; Ramesh Radhakrishnan, Ph.D.; Sudhir Srinivasan, Ph.D.;

and Onur Celebioglu

133 Planning Considerations for Job Scheduling

in HPC Clusters By Saeed Iqbal, Ph.D.; Rinku Gupta; and Yung-Chin Fang

137 Understanding the Scalability of NWChem

in HPC Environments By Munira Hussain; Ramesh Radhakrishnan, Ph.D.; and Kalyana Chadalavada

O CO STABLE OF CONTENTS

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Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, February 2005. Copyright © 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.