I'm new with linux, but I'm jumping in feet first. I've acquired a few "trash" servers, a Sunfire v240 fully loaded, a Dell PE 2850, 2x Dell PE 2650, and possiblly 3x PE 1950 depending on some factors. I can not leave Solaris or windows installed on these machines. So I've decided to go to linux, and cluster them all together. My biggest issue so far is the Sunfire does not have video out, and i want this to be my cluster master. Output is either serial, telnet/ssh, remote desktop access from another machine. I'm going to have to create a bootable USB iso with a Remote desktop program and a static IP already set up. I'm looking for any suggestions; which linux distro is best to use, best way to get access to the sunfire, whats the best way to create a custom iso that i can use. Anything... thank you.

I'm only speaking from my own experience, but for remote installs with no video out, Red Hat (or similar; CentOS, Scientific, Feddora) makes it pretty easy. I admit I've only done the install via VNC once I think, every other time a kickstart file made it even easier (interaction-less install).

I'm not saying other distributions make it difficult, I'm just saying that I've had experience with Red Hat 6.x and it made it probably about as easy as it can be.

You'll probably need to use a serial console, at least for the initial setup. Pretty much any of the major Linuxes support that, so you might want to try a couple different ones. CentOS and Debian are pretty common in server roles, so you might want to start there.

It's best to do a bit of planning beforehand. What sort of cluster do you want to build? What do you want it to be able to accomplish?

I'd like to make the SunFire v240 master for a Kerrighed cluster and connect up a RAID 5 with the HDs. Once everything is running I'd like to be able to access the cluster via a remote desktop system like xrdp or vnc, then use it as a home lab to do things like; run VMware and test other OSs like Kolibrios, Haiku, AnonymOS, ect; try non-bitcoin crypto-currency mining; try anonymity and web-encryption services like TOR or VPN services; play with virtual network labs like Cisco VIRL, GNS3, dynagen & dynamips; and any other software or services that might become an interest in the future, or add new servers or additional hardware without insane difficulty. My experience is network technician/administrator/engineer but i'm not heavily experienced in the system MX side, the the easier the set-up the better at the moment, until i can increase my experience.