For many institutions (particularly edu in recent years), pricing and age are real issues. Budgets are tight, machines have to last a long time, etc. Knowing what you can and cannot get away with is important.
Years ago, after consulting with several sysadmins who had more experience and focus on DEC Alphas, we bought crucial RAM to expand our DEC Alphas. We had to be very explicit about which RAM we wanted, and it was slightly more expensive than "run of the mill" crucial RAM, but it was far far less expensive than buying the same thing from DEC. In recent years, we have routinely been buying Seagate drives through whatever channel gives us the best price to put in Sun servers. Again, we have to be careful about exactly the right part numbers. Also, we found a third party source for authentic mounting spuds and scavenged from hand-me-down systems. The savings is quite significant even when compared to Sun's educational pricing, which seems to be gone now with Oracle. We're still running a number of E250's which are over 10 years past their release and are EOL. However, Sun at least gives longer life cycles of support to begin with, and their equipment is built to last. More recently, we too have gone to SuperMicro. One department built a rather substantial compute cluster with SuperMicro. We have started buying them for routine server setups with Linux. I've never really trusted DELL. They have always tended to be overly proprietary (years ago trying to get Linux to run on them was a real bear), seemingly to lock people in to gear that's not really worth being locked in to. They were slow in coming around to support of Linux, and are probably still too close to Microsoft. Paying for all one brand depends on trust of that brand. But, even with a brand you trust (Sun), you may still look for places where it makes sense to save money. That requires knowledge and experience, and sometimes you have to search out someone else who has that knowledge and experience. --------------- Chris Hoogendyk - O__ ---- Systems Administrator c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center ~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst <[email protected]> --------------- Erdös 4 Matt Simmons wrote: >> 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/
