A few comments on the $399.99 'server'
Linux on 390 Port <[email protected]> wrote on 06/26/2006 10:38:22 AM:
> hmm...
>
> I don't mean to rain on parades, but these figures seem kinda
> high to me.
>
> Tiger Direct (here in Raleigh) is running a deal where you can
> get a 3.03ghz celeron w/256K cache, 1GIG of memory in a case
> (with power-supply) for $79.99. So - $2K for a PC seems awfully
> pricy these days.
That's not enterprise class hardware. That's a cheap desktop. Wouldn't be
allowed in our data center for the following reasons:
1) Does not have redundant power supply that can be plugged into a second
power distribution unit in case the other PDU goes down
2) Does not have dual gigabit ethernet cards (Soon the standard will be
10 Gigabit cards)
3) Does not have known heat characteristics profiled so I cant know what
it's going to cost in my cooling budget,
4) Is likely a mid-tower design and not something I can put into a rack.
>
> Dell sells their bottom-of-the-line "server" for $399.99.
>
> 100g-bit switches are usually around $59 at CompUSA.
That would be 1-GB switch Comp USA does not sell a 100 gigabit switch.. and
Probably 4 ports. Ghod knows what IOS. No vendor support. Probably not
even firmware upgradeable.
We have $10,000 switches for a reason. Power conditioning, vendor supported
hardware, many ports, dual power supplies, etc.
>
> And - is there a reason not to just use one of the Intel boxes
> as the firewall? That would be $80 + $40 for a brand new IDE
> drive.
Yes. Big reason. At what point does the box get overwhelmed by the rate of data
through the firewall and cause a network slowdown. At what point will
a single drive failure kill the box. What is the maximum sustainable data rate
for that 7200 RPM drive? There's a reason 10K and 15K RPM drives exist.
>
> I suppose my point is that you can pay whatever you want for
> a PC these days... of course, you get what you pay for.
And that's a PC. Personal Computer. Enterprise class servers are an entirely
different animals and have much higher expectations. If my little ol'
desktop box kacks, I'm inconvenienced. If we lost one of the enterprise
application servers, or the z/series hundreds to thousands of people would
feel that their cookies had been frosted the wrong flavour.
>
> Even so, I would think that someone doing a big purchase
> could drive an awfully hard bargain out of a white-box
> distributor, and get much better prices than these...
>
Again, you get what you pay for. There are many intangibles that come with
recognized vendor hardware. Accountability. Survivability. Longevity in the
market place. Known performance. 24x7 support, Same Day emergency shipping. The
list goes on.
You get what you pay for yes. But you also do NOT get what you DO NOT pay for.
And that can bring your enterprise to its knees.
>
> > I just returned from an IT Financial conference where I contrasted the
> > costs between running the 45 servers on Intel versus the z/900. I took
> > very conservative costs for the Intel machines ($2K per server), Switches
> > ($10K), and Firewalls ($10K) and all with no support (this $0).
>
>
> - Dave Rivers -
>
> --
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] Work: (919) 676-0847
> Get your mainframe programming tools at http://www.dignus.com
>
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