ASGARD (SYS-007) is the HP BladeSystem C7000 with 16× BL460c Gen8 blades. The reason to use it is profile switching: boot a blade as a Slurm compute node, run the experiment, reimage it as a Talos worker, run the next one. The same iPXE boot menu already set up for ODEN works here — the C7000 Onboard Administrator lets you configure boot order per blade slot, so switching roles is a BIOS setting and a PXE entry, not a reinstall.
Power reality
Before committing to blades as the permanent always-on platform, it’s worth being honest about the enclosure overhead. The C7000 has fixed costs regardless of how many blades are populated: 10 fans, dual OA modules, 2 interconnect switches, backplane management. It doesn’t scale down gracefully.
| Setup | Approx power |
|---|---|
| C7000 enclosure alone (no blades) | 200–400W |
| C7000 + 1 blade | 350–550W |
| C7000 + 3 blades | 500–800W |
| ODEN alone (1U M3, Talos) | 100–150W |
| HEIMDAL alone (Sun X4150, router) | 150–200W |
| ODEN + HEIMDAL | 250–350W |
Two pizza boxes beat three blades in the enclosure on power. The overhead only amortises at 8+ populated slots. For a permanent minimal setup, the 1U rack servers win. For experiments where you want to run 8–16 nodes at once, ASGARD earns its place.
What each role actually needs
| Role | RAM | Disk | Network | Limiting factor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Talos / K8s worker | 32–64GB | 1× OSD disk | 1GbE fine | RAM — current blades too thin |
| OpenStack compute | 32–64GB | local ephemeral | 1GbE fine | RAM |
| OpenStack control | 32GB+ | small | 1GbE fine | RAM |
| Slurm compute | as much as possible | fast scratch | 1GbE mediocre | network |
| Ceph OSD | 16–32GB | more / bigger disks | 1GbE | disk count |
The network note matters for Slurm: blade LOM connects to the enclosure switch backplane at 1GbE, not 10GbE. The switch has 10GbE uplinks going out, but blade-to-blade traffic inside the enclosure goes through the switch at 1GbE. For Talos and OpenStack this is fine. For MPI jobs exchanging large datasets between Slurm nodes it’s a real bottleneck — HPC wants InfiniBand, which the empty interconnect bays 5–8 could take (plus matching mezzanine cards in each blade), but that’s a separate cost. For learning Slurm, 1GbE is workable.
Current blade state
Most blades are underpowered for any of the roles above. CPUs are also unknown across all 16 slots — the OA web GUI reports CPU model and core count per blade and should be checked first. The E5-2600 v1 range runs from E5-2603 (4c, 80W) to E5-2690 (8c/16t, 135W), which matters significantly for role assignment.
| Slot | RAM | Disk |
|---|---|---|
| BLD-001 | 4GB | 2× 146GB SAS |
| BLD-002 | 14GB (mixed, odd count) | — |
| BLD-003 | 32GB | 2× 300GB SAS |
| BLD-004 | 8GB | — |
| BLD-005 | 8GB | 1× 146GB + 1× 300GB SAS |
| BLD-006 | 8GB | 2× 300GB SAS |
| BLD-007 | 8GB | 2× 900GB SAS |
| BLD-008 | 16GB | 2× 300GB SAS |
| BLD-009 | 8GB | — |
| BLD-010 | 8GB | 2× 300GB SAS |
| BLD-011 | 8GB | 2× 300GB SAS |
| BLD-012 | 8GB | 2× 300GB SAS |
| BLD-013 | 32GB | — |
| BLD-014 | 8GB | — |
| BLD-015 | 8GB | 2× 300GB SAS |
| BLD-016 | 8GB | — |
BLD-003 and BLD-013 are already at 32GB and are natural candidates for control-plane or master roles once CPUs are confirmed.
Suggested configuration from existing stock
Available spare hardware:
- 14× RAM-007 (8GB DDR3 1600MHz ECC Reg) — unassigned
- 2× HDD-004 (120GB SATA SSD) — spare
- 6× HDD-002 (146GB 10K SAS) — spare
- Embedded P220i on each blade (can be set to JBOD/passthrough for Ceph)
“Fat” nodes × 2 — Talos control plane, OpenStack control, Slurm master: Add 4× RAM-007 to each blade. From a base of 8–16GB that gives ~40GB. Candidates: BLD-006 and BLD-010, both have 2× 300GB SAS for local storage. Costs 8 of 14 spare sticks. Install a spare 120GB SSD as boot disk in each.
“Medium” nodes × 3 — Talos workers, OpenStack compute, Slurm compute: Add 2× RAM-007 to each → 24GB from the 8GB base. Candidates: BLD-008 (already 16GB, gets to 32GB), BLD-011, BLD-012. All three have 300GB SAS for scratch or Ceph OSDs. Costs the remaining 6 spare sticks.
Rest — thin compute, storage expansion, or powered off: Leave at current RAM. BLD-007’s 900GB SAS pair is better used elsewhere (see below). BLD-003 and BLD-013 at 32GB can step up to fat-node role once CPUs are confirmed.
That leaves 5 blades properly kitted and 11 available for experiments or idle.
BL460c Gen8 DIMM rule: populate per-CPU symmetrically — pairs or quads per memory channel — for best throughput. Don’t mix odd counts.
Storage — what moves where
Pull the 900GB SAS drives from BLD-007 now. HDD-013 (HGST 900GB) and HDD-014 (Toshiba 900GB) are the two largest drives in the blade pool and they’re sitting in a blade that may end up as a thin compute worker. Move them into ODEN or LOKE as permanent Ceph OSDs. This immediately gives the always-on cluster substantially more storage than the current 120GB SSDs.
MIMIR (SYS-004, 15× 1TB SAS) is the Ceph expansion story for later. To connect it: install CTRL-006 (ServeRAID-8e, have 2 unplaced) into a server with a free PCIe slot, then cable it with a SFF-8470 → SFF-8088 cable (not currently owned, inexpensive). TOR is the natural host — it already has CTRL-003 in HBA mode and free PCIe slots. Not urgent, but the hardware is almost all there.
| What | Goes to | When |
|---|---|---|
| 900GB SAS ×2 from BLD-007 | ODEN or LOKE, permanent Ceph OSDs | Now |
| 120GB SSD ×2 spare | BLD fat node boot disks | Before Talos on blades |
| 300GB SAS in blades | Local scratch or blade Ceph OSDs | During ASGARD experiments |
| MIMIR 15× 1TB SAS | TOR via CTRL-006, Ceph expansion | Later (needs cable) |
Three things to do before blades can boot anything
Identify CPUs. Connect to the OA management port, open the web GUI, check CPU model per slot. Ten minutes. Everything else depends on this.
Network uplink. The blade switches in bays 1 and 2 have 4× RJ45 1GbE uplinks (ports 22–25). Run a patch cable from one to any available switch — MODI, MAGNI, whatever’s reachable from the cable box. That’s enough for blades to reach DHCP and iPXE.
RAM redistribution. Pull the 14 spare RAM-007 sticks and install into the chosen fat and medium nodes per the profile above.
The permanent vs experiment split
Always on (~300–400W total):
HEIMDAL → OPNsense router, Sun X4150, ~150–200W
ODEN → Talos, Minecraft + small services, ~100–150W
LOKE → 2nd Talos node (needs RAM-007 × 8 + SSD boot), ~100–150W
Experiments (fire up, learn, power off):
ASGARD → 3–16 blades for Slurm / OpenStack / larger Talos cluster
TYR+TOR+FREJA → Proxmox cluster (M1 DDR2, temporary)
Once the Proxmox experiment wraps, TYR, TOR, and FREJA can be powered down permanently. If ASGARD blades eventually become the long-term compute platform, OPNsense can move to a VM on a blade at that point — but not before the blades are stable and trusted. Don’t consolidate the router onto experimental infrastructure.