On 6/25/06, Marc G. Fournier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'm currently weighing options ... my last two servers were HP Proliant, and I *really* like them, but I might have a line on a supplier in Panama that deals in Dell Servers and not HP ... Looking at Dell's web site, the PowerEdge has an optional "Remote Access Controller" that will it *sounds* like will give me similar functionality as HPs iLO ... But, I've heard bad things about their 'desktop offerings', and am not sure if that follows through to their "Servers" ... So, I'm kinda looking for both good, and bad, experiences with the PowerEdge stuff ... anyone with opinions?
I recently quit from a 4 year job on an ISP with around 300 Dell machines (almost all server models), some older Compaq (Proliant 3000) and recently, about 1 year, some IBM. During this time I found out this: - Compaq Proliant 3000: Failed Power supplys occasionaly. Failed SmartArrays after a reboot. When we called in with something failed, not many questions were asked, they send the part with no problems. - IBM Dual Xeons, Quad Xeons, Xeon and Opteron Blades, and Power5: 3 racks full of machines and had 1 server dead at arrival, 1 FC card dead after some months and nothing else failed! Support was miserable but it wasn't from IBM. - Dell: we had almost all models and all had problems. Power supplys, memory, motherboards, fans. Disks, well guess that's not Dell's fault. I remember the 6450 model, a quad Xeon that had a plastic door. If you close the door with some speed, nothing ridiculous, the server would shutdown. They were usually clustered, neat hein? Dell support even at the highest level is a pain. You hear something like: Customer: we have a problem with a blade server. Support: Please disconnect the power from the machine and connect again. Customer: But that will powerdown ALL the blades! Eventually the contract was raised from Silver and Gold to Platinum on all machines so that we could skip the normal support lines... I had a small stop on a bank last month and they work exclusively with HP, around 3500 servers. Major problems were with disks and some powersupplys and I think dead drives are to be expected. Onboard iLOs rock!!! Coming from Dell Hell I was pretty impressed with HP's machines. If I ever am in a position to choose, I'd go with either HP or IBM, although HP seems to have a stronger Opteron offer. -- Joao Barros _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
