Walt Wimer
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Re: Install QNX4 on a server machine (IBM/HP/DELL)
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Walt Wimer
06/05/2011 11:34 PM
post86437
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Re: Install QNX4 on a server machine (IBM/HP/DELL)
Dan,
I believe that multi-core processors initially boot up in "real mode" with
just one core running. The operating system has to be smart enough to
interrogate the processor and/or firmware (BIOS, EFI) to discover and
activate any additional cores. So QNX4 will probably "just work" on a
multi-core processor, but one core will be active; the other cores will just
sit there dormant. The bigger problem with QNX4 on newer hardware is the
peripherals such as USB, newer ethernet interfaces, etc.
One possible option is to run QNX4 inside a virtual machine using something
like VMWare. VMWare has a product (ESXi?) that runs directly on the server
"bare metal", and then runs multiple virtual machines on top of that. Or
you can run Linux or Windows directly on the server, install VMWare on top
of that, and then create your virtual machines.
I do this with QNX4 using the VMWare's free VMWare Server 2.x product. This
gives me multiple virtual machines to do software development/testing on
before moving my software to our real hardware platform (our embedded
hardware that ships to our customers). The virtual machines are far more
cost effective for a lot of my internal testing (and quieter!) than our real
embedded hardware.
VMWare abstracts away a lot of the real server hardware. The virtual
hardware seems to be well supported by QNX4, at least for my purposes. When
you create a virtual machine, you can tell the virtual machine to behave as
a single-core CPU, even if the real CPU is multi-core. (This is in fact my
situation.)
Since you're running inside a virtual machine on top of a non-real-time OS
(Linux, Windows, or VMWare's own OS), you lose some of QNX4's real-time
capability. This may or may not be a problem for you, depending on your
needs. When QNX4 first came out, hardware was a lot slower. QNX4 inside a
virtual machine on modern hardware may be as fast or faster than running
directly on yesteryear's hardware...
Originally, we performed all of our QNX4 software builds on a dedicated
physical i586-class machine. Now we use a VMWare virtual machine on top of
Linux on a 2-year-old DELL PowerEdge server with a Core2 Duo processor and
4GB of RAM. Our builds are now twice as a fast as on the old dedicated
hardware.
I hope this helps! Good luck!
Walt
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Dan Li" <community-noreply@qnx.com>
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 11:15 AM
To: "qnx4-community" <post86428@community.qnx.com>
Subject: Install QNX4 on a server machine (IBM/HP/DELL)
> In past years I have been using two IBM x330 machine to run QNX as remote
> access real-time servers. Unfortunately one is down recently, so I have to
> buy a new server to replace the dead one. Now I have some questions:
>
> 1. Multicore CPU support: Now hardly find a server machine with single
> core CPU. I am not sure about the ability of QNX4 multicore support?
>
> 2. Some concerns about the drivers of network card, video card. Any
> suggestion about server machine selection from IBM/HP/DELL. I think one
> entry-level server shall be good enough to run QNX4, such as:
> - HP ProLiant DL120
> - IBM IBM System x3250
> - DELL PowerEdge R210
> Anyone has some recommendation about this?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Dan
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> QNX4 Community Support
> http://community.qnx.com/sf/go/post86428
>
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