Since SGI discontinued all of their IA32-based systems, we decided to purchase IBM xSeries x330 servers for our Phase III upgrade. We were really pressed for time to get the upgrade online as soon as possible after the order, and so we agreed to install the disks, second processors and memory ourselves to save time. On September 11, just before our systems were due to arrive, terrorists attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Centers. IBM was forced to re-allocate many of their pending shipments in order to help get many of the affected entities back online. This further delayed our receipt of the units, and forced the units to be delivered across several days. We'd really like to thank Marie Miller and Jay Bonanno of IBM for doing yeoman's work to expedite this process as much as possible. We pushed them very hard and made a lot of unreasonable requests, yet they accomplished almost every one of them!
A couple of days before the systems came in, we started receiving the
additional processors, disks, and memory. We stacked the boxes in our new
(unfinished) machine room.
There were a LOT of boxes, and this was less than half of the total order!
To give some scale to this picture, Leroy is 6'8" tall.
The cabling of the power in these racks is a bit less than elegant, but
at least the ugly part will be hidden behind the side panel.
Here, Roger is installing the rails in the first rack. Note the first three units are already in place. The rack rails were a dream to install, and could hold themselves in place well enough that one person had no trouble installing them.