> If you're slightly unlucky, such as Ski with his Dell & Crucial memory, the > 3rd party parts might simply not work at all.
That is assuming, of course, that Dell isn't actively blocking 3rd party hardware, which changes the ball game a little. On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 2:49 PM, Edward Ned Harvey <[email protected]> wrote: >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf >>> Of Brian McKee >>> >>> I think that's hopelessly naive - If you think they will have the same >>> ram on the shelf a year from now that shipped with the system, I've >>> got a bridge for you. > > Allow me to rephrase: > > Yes, if you have a 2yr old dell server, and you want to buy a memory or hard > drive upgrade kit from Dell, you can rest assured that it's available for > purchase. They need to keep these things in stock anyway, for warranty > replacements, so they'll happily keep some number of them for sale too. I > have done this many times, and I am doing it again now. > > By the time the server is 3-5 years old, the parts might be more difficult > to identify or locate, or unavailable, because now you're approaching what > they would have called the end of life of the product. > > The same is not true for commodity parts - drives from newegg etc - Because > the consumers who buy from these outlets are overwhelmingly looking for > what's available *now* and not looking for what was available 6 or 18 months > ago, if there's something "better" available now. It's simply not worth > while for these mfgrs to keep their products available in this type of > market, several months or years after they were introduced. > > A case can be made, if the system-branded products (Dell etc) cost over 2x > higher than the commodity products, that perhaps there's something to gain > by buying 1.5x or 2x as many commodity products and just keeping the extras > onhand as spares. But there's one thing you're never going to escape: Even > when commodity parts are standards compliant and supposedly interchangeable, > different implementations of some standard are sometimes still not > compatible (or buggy.) The supposedly standard commodity parts were never > tested on this system, with this chipset, as thoroughly as the > system-branded product. > > Take the wifi consortium for example. Before the consortium existed, > 802.11a,b, and g had already been around for years. Many companies had > already produced implementations, and products on the market ... But > generally speaking, you needed a single brand of access point and clients, > because the different brands weren't compatible with each other, even though > they were all complying to the same standard. Since they created the > consortium, if you want to put the "WiFi" logo on your product, you must > bring your product to the twice-annual gathering, and undergo compatibility > testing with just about every known chipset or product out there. You're > allowed some level of failure, but too much, and you can't call your product > "WiFi." > > The reason to pay for all one brand of components is because they're all one > brand of components. > > If you stray from this, there is ground to be gained. If you're lucky, you > may save money. If you're slightly unlucky, such as Ski with his Dell & > Crucial memory, the 3rd party parts might simply not work at all. That's > not too bad; the extent of damage is just time and money getting up to the > point of failure. If you're really unlucky, you might get a system that you > think is working, but is actually destroying data. This is a huge topic of > discussion in the ZFS discussion list - SSD's that ignore the cache flush > command, if used for ZIL, cause risk to your entire data pool. The official > answer is to only buy Sun hardware, with Sun firmware that's certified. But > the unofficial answer is a bunch of people with random websites, who post > various homebrew techniques of testing the cache flush command on drives, > and results from their tests, stating make, model, firmware level of the > drives tested. You have to trust their results, or trust the method to > retest it yourself, or whatever. > > Or just buy the Sun hardware at 5x the price and rest assured you won't be > fired. > > _______________________________________________ > Tech mailing list > [email protected] > http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ > -- LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? COOKIE MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process. COOKIE MONSTER: Boy, I wish I were a sysadmin so I could go to the NJ-PICC Sysadmin Conference! http://www.picconf.org _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
