Recommendations for server hardware (1U and 2U)..

[Brian Cluff]

2 days!?!  I'm talking about standard rack power supplies.. I could have 
had a new power supply in the server in 1/2 hour (if any of them had 
ever failed on me)... and thats if I had walked to the store.  I found 
that I usually had to spend that much time making the necessary phone 
calls to arrange for the repair guy or part.

Not having proprietary hardware has always been a big deal for me, 
mostly because of the fact that I have been forced to maintain hardware 
that didn't have any expected lifetime they bought it and expected it to 
run forever, so when it finally did break... I found too often that when 
I used the proprietary stuff that it was usually faster and cheaper to 
just get a new server than it was to try and fix the old one, which just 
ended up drawing out the down time.  It would have been preferable to 
get the old one back up and running for a small cost and then be able to 
switch out to a new server on some planned down time.

Brian Cluff

On 08/21/2010 02:25 PM, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
> I run into the opposite problem - some tight case from unknown
> manufacturer means you will never find a PSU that fits. With Dell you
> call and withing 2 days you have one on your desk. As for the price it
> is never 10 times the cost - some times as high as 2 times, but never
> 10 times. But then again I have only once had a Dell power supply go
> out on me. And I have a sample size of several thousand machines and
> almost 15 years.
>
> On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Brian Cluff<brian at snaptek.com>  wrote:
>> I personally don't like all the proprietary parts that dell uses, weather it
>> makes them easier to work on or not.
>>
>> It really doesn't matter in the long run if you need to put a new power
>> supply into the machine, only to find that Dell is the only one on the
>> planet that can sell you that power supply and not only will it be a special
>> order, but it will cost 10 times what a standard server power supply costs
>> that you can get off the shelf.
>>
>> Brian Cluff
>>
>> On 08/21/2010 01:06 PM, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
>>>
>>> That is a good point - The only server upgrades I do are hard drives
>>> and memory - for which Dell is easy.  But if you wanted to upgrade the
>>> raid card, or move into a hotswap backplane or, put in redundant fiber
>>> channel cards, or even up the cpu's; Dell is more difficult because of
>>> it's chasy design and limited card slots. Not to mention they get
>>> additional performance by using specialized parts - so you start to
>>> think about dell specific cards and that can make comparisons and
>>> price to performance evaluation more difficult.
>>>
>>> So for me - who simply replaces the server every five years and does a
>>> minor upgrade to it before trickle down, Dell is great - if you do
>>> more customization then it is not so good.
>>>
>>> On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 12:46 PM, Kevin Fries<kfries6 at gmail.com>    wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I have run both Dell and Supermicro and have had good luck with both.  If
>>>> I
>>>> had my choice, I would select Supermicro because I like the
>>>> upgradeability
>>>> over Dell.  That being said, I still have two Dell R200's in my lab
>>>> running
>>>> ProxmoxVE environment that I use to do product simulations early in the
>>>> R&D
>>>> cycle that run great.
>>>>
>>>> But if you want absolute Linux compatibility... look at System76.
>>>>
>>>> HTH
>>>> Kevin
>>>>
>>>> On Aug 21, 2010 1:37 PM, "Bryan O'Neal"
>>>> <Bryan.ONeal at theonealandassociates.com>    wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I would like to second my vote for Dell - I have had to work on some
>>>> old SuperMicro machines and it was never pleasant. Dell on the other
>>>> hand has so many killer tools and so much information and such helpful
>>>> linux people that I have never had a complaint.
>>>>
>>>> BTW I can hook you up with my OEM reseller - may get you a better
>>>> discount, then again it may not. But always purchase as a business
>>>> from Dell not an individual - I hear the individual support kinda
>>>> bites and it requires nothing to be a business.
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 11:39 AM, Stephen<cryptworks at gmail.com>    wrote:>
>>>>   I
>>>> have noticed dell does ...
>>>>
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