updating by way of hardware swap
 

I have 5 deployed Websphere application servers running redhat 7.3 on dell 6450s.

I need to upgrade the OS to AS 3.1, and the application too, on all of them. The twist is, these systems live about an 8 hour drive away.

What I would like to do is buy a system and configure a disk locally with the desired application version and operating system, and take a 10 minute outage for someone there to swap the disk out and reboot.

Dell no longer sells 6450s and apparently no longer employs people with either the english speaking skills or the mental clarity to recommend a hardware configuration that would be compatible.

My question is, if I were to go to a place like newegg and put together a system capable of configuring such a disk, what hardware will be critical in my ability to plop in a new disk and boot it up?

I'm not real sure how much customization the redhat installer does with respect to hardware. I suspect that I only have to worry about the scsi drive controller (Adaptec 7899P) and the processor (4xIntel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.40GHz).

The installer seems to configure an SMP kernel regardless of how many CPUs you have so I'm guessing I only need to have one.

Would I need to be concerned about things like ethernet (Intel Corporation 82557), memory size (as long as I manually handle swap), other hardware I'm not considering... or will the modules be there and ready to leap to attention in a new environment?

Thank you for any insight.

Hi,

kudzu does a good job in identifying h/w changes...... but what u r trying to do on a production system is pretty much risky.

What I can suggest is that get a 6th machine ( probably a lower config one ) and set it up and bring it live, and take your production ones out one by one. reinstall them and put them back into production.

-Subhasis

I wouldn't try it. There are to many things that can go wrong and you will end up driving 8 hours anyway but this time it will be an emergency.