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This may be a stupid question but you never know with proprietary equipment.

We trying to build an internal development Ubuntu Cloud and looking for cheap hardware to use. It looks like there are some cheap refurbished Cisco MCS 7845 I2 K9 servers on ebay. If we get them can they be repurposed and loaded with Ubuntu 10.4? According to the specs on the Cisco site, it's just a server, I don't see any proprietary hardware on it, but I might be wrong.

So did anyone have any experience with a situation like this?

Thank you

ewwhite
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konung
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  • cheap? cisco branded gear isn't cheap usually. be sure to compare with its HP/IBM equivalent. – petrus Mar 09 '11 at 20:16
  • Didn't buy it got overbid but each server was sold for $330 - is that cheap or expensive? I guess that depends on you perspective. To me that's reasonable. – konung Mar 09 '11 at 21:28
  • seems reasonable too, and for that price you'll also be able to run cucm 5 or 6 on that hardware if you want to play ;) – petrus Mar 09 '11 at 22:17
  • Running Nortel BCM here, I actually don't like cisco's routers, or equipment\software for that matter. I may be unlucky but I had too many failures. Just looking for cheap commodity hardware. :-) – konung Mar 10 '11 at 00:46

1 Answers1

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Those servers are just rebadged HP ProLiant DL-series systems (or in some cases, IBM). Please see:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/connection/pcd/ucpcd.html#wp40540

And match the Cisco model up with the relevant original manufacturer. Either way, these are all standard servers and Ubuntu or any modern OS shouldn't have driver issues.

Edit: Looking at your link, these are ProLiant DL380 G5 systems. The full hardware specifications and options are available here: http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12477_na/12477_na.html

The full Ubuntu 10.4 support packages with drivers and monitoring agents for HP are here: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=3288134&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=1121516&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=4092

ewwhite
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