yeah, we usually avoid Dell, but we inherited a customer with an aging
set of Dell servers and Dell LTO backup drive in a datacenter. The tape
drive would error out with any tape or cleaning cartridge that wasn't a
Dell-branded cartridge. ridiculous.
Bill
Ben Scott wrote:
On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 8:48 PM, Richard Stovall <[email protected]> wrote:
Tis different, IMHO. If I'm buying a low end server with SATA drives
I don't expect to have to pay Dell or HP for OEM drives with some
custom firmware, which is exactly what you're getting.
As they saying goes, "+1". If we got something for the money, it
would be one thing. But Dell's drives are very generic -- often just
the OEM drive with a Dell P/N sticker slapped on it. When I look for
hard disk firmware updates I'm given a list of *OEM part numbers*. No
correlation to Dell P/N's. In order to determine which files I should
get for my drives, I have to pull them out of the chassis and copy the
OEM P/N and compare to the Dell download list. Where's the
"value-added engineering and support" in that??
I don't expect Dell to support non-Dell drives. If they want to put
some kind of warning in the firmware/driver/etc, so that I have to
click a "Warranty is Void" checkbox, okay, fine. I pays my money, I
takes my chance. But *enforcing* this is bogus.
This is predominately a money-grab and customer lock-in technique.
It may have been exacerbated by compatibility problems (which we can
only suppose), but locking out everyone is a money grab.
The fact that Dell isn't the first to do this doesn't make it right.
The main reason I think this is so bogus is for contingency reasons.
Let's say I have a server develop trouble in an unexpected way.
Thanks to this, I can only try parts from Dell. If I want to try
something creative to get somebody out of a fix, I'm sunk. Or what
happens when Dell discontinues all support, five years after sale? If
I want to recycle an older server to less-important tasks, I'm sunk.
-- Ben
~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
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