mdff said: > hi misc@, > > which hardware r u talking about for example? we'd like > to use such "real" servers, but we can't decide what vendor > to choose. we definitely do not want to "build" our own > server (taking the raid controller from vendor x and the > disks from vendor y, having an overkill xeon mabo from z > and so on). we'd like to have on-site hw-support at least > next day (being in austria this is not possible with all > the big "server-sellers")
for my new firewalls I am using servers from a company called ASA Computers in california. They work well, I told them I wanted an openbsd firewall with specs and they supplied some good ones(raid card required a firmware upgrade) Supermicro 3U chassis with triple redundant power supplies(hot swap of course) Dual Xeon motherboard with 1 3.4Ghz EM64T CPU 2GB memory 4x36GB U320 SCSI disks in hardware raid 10 ICP Vortex raid card 128MB cache Hot swap drive bays cdrom floppy lots of big fans 8 network interfaces $4100 (price from 1/25/2005) > > our favourite was/is HP's DLxxx series, but mickey@ is > working on the ciss-port for their storage controllers and > we don't know when it's stable for production use... I tried openbsd 3.6 I think in a DL360G3 and it did not boot. I recently moved my company away from HP servers on the front end for cost and reliability issues(though the onsite support was handy, I've had to get a ton of system boards replaced from DL360G3s). My new systems from ASA are about $2300/unit cheaper(after discounts from both sides). I have 2 of them with a 3rd cold spare. they will be running in bridigng mode in active-active configuration. redundancy is handled by ospf in my core switches, makes some folks here feel better that if the cheap solution (vs checkpoint was the other option) falls over then the big expensive switches re-route the trafic to the other firewall. > any experience values which vendor to choose servers from? > and of course, where the newer hardware is fully supported > by openbsd? I prefer to use a vendor that actually has experience with openbsd. HP does not I think. when I bought redhat from them they basically sent my company's order to redhat and redhat sent me the CDs and stuff. maybe if you get a big enough order or support services it is different. There are quite a few small(er) resellers like ASA that have experience with openbsd. >> Avoid relying on cheap hardware to make your cost point. OpenBSD runs >> well on "real", modern servers. Managers at mid/large companies aren't >> going to want to hear about how you pulled machines out of the trash and >> now the business depends on them, even if they're 4x redundant. don't confuse cheap hardware with crap hardware. you can buy bottom of the barrel crap or pull it out of the trash, not to be confused with something that is of high quality but 30-50% cheaper then a tier 1 name brand provides. I thought this quote was cute, saw it on an email from one of the guys at the vendor: "We make a good (almost generic) machine from brand name parts, whereas Dell makes a good (brand name) machine from generic parts." I also like the smaller vendors because they tend to burn their systems in before sending them out. About 50% of my failures on the HP gear I have gotten have been detected in the first 20-30 minutes of use, basically just by installing the OS and rebooting. Once the systems are running for a while they tend to be fairly solid. note openbsd is really only on my firewalls, 85% of the rest of the systems are redhat enterprise 2.1/3, some win2k, a few HPUX, some debian(my preferred choice). nate
