On Monday morning, the GW and Dell project teams began the physical deployment of the Colonial One cluster hardware. In addition, Dell dispatched a team of 4 from their COSIP group (customer on-site inspection) to monitor and maintain quality of the installation.
The team prepared the server cabinets by adjusting rack rails and power distribution units (PDUs) before beginning the install of the actual blade enclosures. Because of the number of cables required for each node, careful attention was paid to the spacing of the rack rails ensuring enough space on the front of the blade enclosures for cables and enough space on the rear for proper airflow.
While half of the team prepared the server cabinets, the other half began unpacking and prepping the blade enclosures and blade servers.
The Dell C8220 blade server required an on-site BMC cable installation to move the Ethernet port from the rear to the front, so each blade had to be opened and modified. The care and attention paid to this process by the Dell Team makes the installation appear like a work of art.
With the cabinet prepped, the blade server enclosures are loading in one by one - 8 in each cabinet!
Day one is complete!
