On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Buccaneer for Hire. <[email protected]> wrote: > The first thing they ask for, when you call the vendor, is for an asset tag > or serial number. We keep it in the DB so I can always verify it. It is even > better when the vendor makes is easier to get it through dmidecode.
Yup. That is what they always ask for. The helpdesk engineers won't even talk to me (justified!) unless I assure them I have a valid-service tag and my BIOS firmware is up-to-date (more flexible!) (it raises an interesting thought I had: I wish the sales guys sometimes gave me a "dummy" service tag while I am evaluating hardware options to buy a new cluster. Often times one doesn't really want to try-and-buy each option (then I would get a service tag!) but yet one has questions that are not answered in the spec sheets or the manuals are hazy. The support-engineers are often the most knowledgeable about these nuts-and-bolts aspects I've found. But in the absence of a service tag it's hard to get access to them. ) Keeping the BIOS firmware up-to-date is a chore though. When we are choosing Linux distros in the interest of stability a frequently updated firmware gets irritating. I guess it's a tradeoff to enjoy bug-fixes feature-additions so maybe I shouldn't be cribbing...... -- Rahul _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
