Re: Server Grade Hardware Purchase [OT]

This is as bad as asking "Which distro is the best?" in many ways, as 
experience will vary a lot.

We are about to end of life the last of some SuperMicro machines we 
bought less than 18 months ago due to hardware issues with their RAID 
subsystem which SuperMicro can't seem to resolve. Their support has been 
great, but the end result is still broken servers.

I can't speak for Sun's x86 hardware, but their Sparc hardware, while 
underpowered and overpriced, was always well engineered.

My current and former employer both used Dell heavily. About 100 servers 
here and a few thousand at my last employer. The 2900 series is a good 
low-end server.

I haven't personally used any HP hardware in a decade. As you say 
though, rumor has it it doesn't suck like it used to.

All in all, I can't think of many good reasons to choose Dell over the 
others, based on my limited knowledge. Their support is great, hardware 
replacement is super fast (especially if you pay for the 4 hour 
warranty, or whatever it is called), prices are cheap, Linux support is 
excellent, and the build quality is above average.

Does the vendor of your software have a hardware recommendation?

Chris

Bob K Mertz wrote:
> Take a look at Sun's x86 solutions or SuperMicro.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Josiah Ritchie" <josiah.ritchie@...>
>
> Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:04:28 
> To:cplug@...
> Subject: [CPLUG] Server Grade Hardware Purchase [OT]
>
>
> I haven't purchased server grade hardware in over a year. In my prior
> shop, we would almost always default to Dell. I've heard whispers that
> HP is the way to go. I want a machine that I know runs lots of other
> places without any trouble rather than something I build from scratch
> or someone else tosses together for me and I want something
> economical. The server will host an application called MPower and it's
> SQL based database. (It's win only now, but they are moving toward the
> open source which will include linux and MySQL support I hear.) The
> machine will unlikely have more than 5 consecutive users in its
> lifetime.
>
> I'm spec'ing out a PowerEdge 2900. I thought some of you guys might
> have something better with the latest info and given that it may turn
> into a Linux box in the future.
>
> Thanks,
> JSR/
>
>