Hot Swap Ram for servers??????????

[LxMxFxD]

I just got a box setup and they put the wrong amount of ram in it. They can't put the other 1GB in it till tuesday cuz of the holiday - but they're telling me no downtime cuz the box is hotswapable with ram. Meaning, no need to power down to put in the new ram.

Is this possible? I almost think they're lying to me....

If its for real thats awesome... but someone please verify. google turned up nothing for me

[Jason K]

Well I can't speak for your OS and hardware, but I know its possible. I think there's one edition of windows that support this, and thats the datacenter edition. And datacenter edition is something that very few have. As for other OS's I don't know if they support this, I just know about windows.

[tamasrepus]

It's also possible in Linux. Hot-swap RAM functionality was contributed to Linux sometime during 2.4, I think by Hewlett-Packard?

Presumably some server line of theirs supports this.

[porcupine]

I just got a box setup and they put the wrong amount of ram in it. They can't put the other 1GB in it till tuesday cuz of the holiday - but they're telling me no downtime cuz the box is hotswapable with ram. Meaning, no need to power down to put in the new ram.

Is this possible? I almost think they're lying to me....

If its for real thats awesome... but someone please verify. google turned up nothing for me

I've seen hot-swap PCI servers (dell 6350), but never hot swap ram (I've seen redundant RAM in the new dells, but I wasn't aware it was hotswap). What kind of server is this? I know for certain what happens if you try to hot swap ram in a regular box (heh saw it accidentally happen, and the RAM came out dead after being inserted to a powered on box).

[tical]

If that actually works, I would be very surprised. Forgetting about whether or not the box locks up, i'd bet your kernel won't see the new RAM until after a reboot. If everything works flawlessly, i'd be interested to know what kind of machine that is (if you can ascertain it from the datacenter).

[tamasrepus]

The IBM zSeries has supposedly supported hot-swap RAM for the last couple of years.

Considering how much a zSeries mainframe costs... I think they could afford a few cubic acres of engineers to address the inherent problems.

I sort of surprised at the skepticism so far in this thread; if there's anything about business, if there's a market, there will be a product. Think vending machines for Japanese schoolgirl panties. Someone apparently wanted hot-swap RAM as well.

[LxMxFxD]

It's also possible in Linux. Hot-swap RAM functionality was contributed to Linux sometime during 2.4, I think by Hewlett-Packard?

Presumably some server line of theirs supports this.

It actually is an HP - and I"m running RHEL 4 - so its 2.6 kernel.

I don't mean to spam these guys but this is the link:

http://www.e5hosting.com/basic3.php

They got me setup in like 2 hours, friggin amazin. So I guess this is for real. I'll scour HP's site about this shortly.

[Coolraul]

HP has this as does IBM and Sun has had this capability for years on their ES line from 4500 - 10000 I think. It is real, freaked me out the first time I saw it (Sun 5500) but that was in 1997 I think.

[spyder97gs]

Simply put, the answer is yes there is such a thing. Do you really think they would risk their own hardware at their expense? I would put faith in your support team and take their word, as hard as that may be.

[jayjay]

As other posters have said, this has been around for some time now. However, mostly on higher end hardware. Looks like your company uses a dell, and a quick search of their site does yeild some results. Are they lying? People always lie. (General statement, not company specific) If they give you the model number of your system, or system boot logs may yeild important information from the dells (iirc).

If that actually works, I would be very surprised. Forgetting about whether or not the box locks up, i'd bet your kernel won't see the new RAM until after a reboot. If everything works flawlessly, i'd be interested to know what kind of machine that is (if you can ascertain it from the datacenter).

That's pretty dead on, another thing is autodetection.

I'd have them reboot the box when they do it, schedule a time with them and such if it's already a production server. Which it shouldn't be if you just got it.. but that's just IMHO.

[hiryuu]

As others alluded, it's not that I doubt it can be done (IBM's and Sun's higher stuff can hot swap anything, including CPU and mainboard). It's that I doubt it can be done on such an entry-level system.

I would plan a shutdown for a cold-swap, or expect a little more downtime as they get new RAM and possibly another mainboard...

[WebDev]

Hope it does, plan that it doesnt.

[rasputinj]

I have a bunch of IBM, HP, Sun servers at my company that can do it, but normally higher end servers are not used by DCs for hosting. I guess it is great if the company you are with uses higher end servers. I still perfer to take a system down to work on it myself.

[HenkeZan]

We have an old HP DL760G2 with "Hot swap" RAM, works great with W2K3 Enterprise Edition. It detects the added memory.

/Henrik

[riverpast]

How does it detect removed memory? Does that mean everything in RAM would have a hard copy on HD at all time?

[HenkeZan]

Hmm, I dont have enough posts to link, but search Microsoft site for "Hot-add memory support".
Anyway, I dont think it supports "Hot-removal".

/Henrik

[Saulius]

Hot-swap means adding/removing, not just adding.
If server supports RAM memory mirroring and hot-swap you can remove module and then add one, but it's for safety if one module damages.

Hmm, I dont have enough posts to link, but search Microsoft site for "Hot-add memory support".
Anyway, I dont think it supports "Hot-removal".

/Henrik