Not only about computer network

Problem Statement In the previous two articles, I described the issue I was running into when installing Ubuntu 22.04 on a Dell VRTX server.  After some research, I suspect it's related to the incorrect configuration of the multipath I/O function. How to fixed it? Reproducing the Issue with VMware To reproduce and fix the multipath issue, I decided to set up a testing environment with a VM running inside VMware ESXi.  If we can create a VM with two virtual SCSI HBA cards, and connect the same virtual hard drive file to them.  The Linux VM should be able to see the same hard drive twice via two SCSI paths. Multipath I/O Config In VMware ESXi First Try With VMware ESXi, when adding a SCSI card to a VM, there is one option to configure if the SCSI bus is sharing.  The default configuration is None.  In order to share the same virtual hard drive to the VM twice via those two SCSI cards, I set them to "Physical".  Ideally, setting to "Virtual" should also work. ...

High-Level Architecture of Dell PowerEdge VRTX In the previous article , I explain the issue I am running into when installing Ubuntu 22.04 on a Dell VRTX server.  To understand a little bit more about what went wrong and potentially fix the problem, I tried to know how the Dell VRTX server was designed. After some googling, I found the  Technical Guide from Dell.  It revealed a pretty interesting design of the system.  The Dell VRTX system is designed to be a Cost-Effective Hyperconverged server system for a small office environment or remote office environment, where there are some compute power is needed but not on a large scale.  One Dell VRTX chassis can host up to 4 server blades, up to 25 x 2.5 in. NLSAS, SAS, or SAS SSD hot-plug drives (not including the hard drive bays on the server blades), and 8 flexible PCIe slots.  All those hard drives, PCIe slots, and network ports belong to the Dell VRTX chassis.  The chassis management syste...

Background During one of the recent projects, I want to install a Linux OS onto a Dell VRTX server. Without checking the hardware compatibility list and with limited knowledge about the Dell VRTX server platform, I started to install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on one of the server blades in the chassis. And running into some interesting issues, which forces me to learn more about the Dell VRTX platform and Linux OS. Though spending quite a lot of effort in sorting out the issue, I am happy to share it with others who are interested to know more about it. Server blades inside the Dell VRTX chassis have no hard hard drive installed. But the chassis enclosure has 25 2.5 in SAS hard drive installed. Before starting the whole process, I picked up two of the SAS hard drive and created a RAID-1 logical drive, and assigned it to the server blade. I thought the system would be able to boot from the new logical drive. The Start of the Problem After inserting the USB disk with Ubuntu 22.04, the server blad...