Migrating from an old SDI to a new SDI-104 System

This page contains information about migrating from an an old SDI system to a new SDI-104 system.

In this page, the term "old SDI" refers to the SSEC Desktop Ingestor, which was manufactured and sold from 1997 through 2005, and the term "SDI-104" refers to its replacement, the SSEC Data Ingestor, manufactured and sold beginning in 2006.

Although the old SDI and SDI-104 are similar in functionality, the two devices are distinctly different implementations. The main differences are listed below to answer questions commonly asked when migrating from an old SDI system to an SDI-104 system.

• The old SDI is effectively a desktop PC running the Solaris operating system with specialized software and hardware to perform its ingestor tasks. The SDI-104 is an embedded Linux appliance.
• Neither the old SDI or the SDI-104 are intended to be general-purpose computers. This is due to the real-time nature of their job. The SDI-104 goes one step further, using a substantially smaller, simpler, and component-based version of the Linux operating system.
• The old SDI runs its operating system off a normal hard drive. The SDI-104 loads a small Linux OS from compact flash into RAM and only uses the hard drive for data and user customizations.
• The SDI-104 uses the "DSL" version of Linux, which fits on a compact flash device installed on the motherboard. This is the largest single difference between the old SDI and the SDI-104. With the SDI-104, changes made to the operating system settings are written to the RAM disk operating system image and are lost on reboot.
• The SDI-104 uses ssh keys for remote access, and does not have a console password by default.
• Like the old SDI, the SDI-104 software updates are downloaded from the McIDAS Website and are installed using a supplied install script.
• The SDI-104 is intended to be trivial to set up, while still allowing user customizations after delivery.

See the SDI Operator's Manual's Overview Chapter and its FAQ for additional information.