Re: Server Grade Hardware Purchase [OT]

On Jun 27, 2008, at 6:32 PM, Dennis Little wrote:

>
> -HP makes nice hardware, but I will second Bob's opinion of finding
> upgrade / add-on parts and forget finding support documentation,  
> drivers,
> etc. once the hardware gets any age on it. As a matter of fact,  
> finding
> anything on HP's web site is a total bear. They could learn a few  
> things
> from support.dell.com. :) HP is fairly notorious for rigging their
> equipment to make a piece of otherwise standard hardware  
> proprietary. Case
> in point: old LaserJet RAM was simple PC133 RAM with several pins  
> jumpered
> to one another. If the printer did not detect the jumpered pins, it  
> would
> not recognize the RAM. I did a how-to a few years back about turning
> regular RAM into HP printer RAM.
>

Interesting.... I wonder if they are doing something similar with the  
RAM for the servers (thus explaining the problems we've been having)

>
> -Dell has given me no problems whatsoever with various flavors of  
> Linux
> (SuSE, Ubuntu, RHEL, BSD) and I like the fact that Dell has less
> proprietary hardware than HP. I give Dell tremendous bonus points for
> support.dell.com. No other OEM gives you the power to go to a site,  
> type
> in a model or service tag and get drivers within 1 minute with  
> virtually
> no searching. I had a laptop I was working on the other day that  
> shipped
> in 1999 and I could still get the drivers, manuals, etc. just as  
> easily as
> something new. In my opinion, if I cannot get support for hardware a  
> few
> years from now, I would rather not even use it. Dell also has a ton of
> involvement with open-source O/S drivers and management, making their
> solutions somewhat easier to use.
>

I do have to give Dell credit for the support page and for the fact  
that they are supporters of open source but on that note I think Sun  
probably has a much better support for open source issues.  I also  
agree that most of Dell's hardware is very linux friendly on all  
flavors but there are some that are tied to Red Hat (I'm talking as  
far as simple installation -- anything can be compiled).  This is  
especially true with a lot of the PERC controllers and, to be honest,  
I think PERC is my biggest gripe about Dell.  From my experience they  
have been total crap.  I used to work for a company that used all Dell  
(we're talking about 15 racks of dell servers) and I was daily walking  
around reseating drives because PERC controllers (incorrectly) said it  
was a bad drive.  Once you'd pull a drive out and put it back in it  
would think "oh, new drive" and would run for months or years without  
a problem.  The biggest issue here tho is that the PERC controllers  
always seemed to put a heavy burden on the machines while rebuilding  
(definately more so than a lot of controllers out there like 3ware).   
Because we were constantly making drives rebuild we lost a lot of  
performance overall.  The other huge issue I've had in the recent 6  
months or so is their rail systems (primarily for the 1950 and 2850  
servers).  Aside from that I think Dell does have a good touch of what  
HP has as far as rigging hardware, however, they aren't nearly as bad  
as HP and some of that is even offset by the fact that you can  
typically find Dell parts very easily from non-Dell vendors.

> -SuperMicro always seems attractive to me in some way, but has always
> fallen short for one reason or another. I maintain several 4x4 SATA
> chassis systems and they all have issues. On the first generation, I  
> do
> not think that we have a single drive tray that is not broken, after  
> only
> 2 years of use. The trays jam and then the release mechanism breaks.  
> They
> are of very poor design and fit. The trays have been used maybe 10  
> times
> each.
>

Interesting.  How old are these servers?  Between all of my customers  
I probably have no less than 500 drives in supermicro systems that I  
deal with and I've never actually had one break on me -- well, with  
the exception of leaving one on the floor and stepping on it :)

> On the new chassis, it is near impossible to remove more than one  
> column
> of drives at a time because of the low clearance between columns of
> drives. If you have a drive in an adjacent column just popped out of  
> the
> chassis, the drives in the next column over cannot be removed or  
> inserted.
> On top of that, the trays are so difficult to remove the first 10  
> times or
> so that you risk whipping the tray across the room when it finally  
> lets
> loose; one must put almost all of their body weight on the tray to  
> get it
> out.
>

I 100% agree with the not being able to remove more than a column of  
drives.  This is definately a huge frustration of mine but its worth  
it to be able to avoid the pitfalls of many other servers.  I,  
however, have never seen the difficulty removing drives like you  
mention.  I'm curious, did you buy your systems from supermicro  
directly or from a supermicro system integrator?  This can make a huge  
difference.

>
> Best Regards,
> Dennis Little