ibm and hp have the 15k options. not dell.
http://www.neuse.net/server/features.shtml
i'd rather just tell someone you gonna hafta pay $4k for a decent server
instead of every little thing being an option that always jacks up the
price way beyond dell's advertised base model.
regards,
jim
Jim Ray, President
Neuse River Network, Inc.
tel: 919-838-1672 x111
http://www.Neuse.Net
Ask about our Clean Technologies. Established in the Carolinas 1997.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
It's no secret that I don't have a lot of love for Dell, but I'm fairly
sure that you can get 15K RPM disks if you want to in your Dell system.
That's how most vendors work.
Faster rotation isn't always a performance gain, if your system is I/O
bound, that that will help, but even then, not always. If you have a lot
of data, and need disk performance you are better off spending your dough
on more spindles to dedicate, and more channels. IDE will never do a good
job for I/O heavy apps, just not in the design.
Other times you have memory bound apps that don't use the disk much.
Still other times you have CPU bound apps that don't use disks much.
Other considerations include,
- CPU to RAM transfers
- I/O bus, can you get that data from the disk controller to the
processor fast enough?
- PCI,PCE, or PCIX controllers, are they fast enough?
The big point here is that there are a LOT of things, if you want a
general purpose server that'll do anything you won't get one that will do
everything, at least without spending a LOT of money.
As for service, that's often a factor of the size of the business. I can
get a replacement disk very quickly. I had to call HP for one a while
back. I called at 4PM, spent about 5 minutes on the phone, when I came in
at 8 AM the next day, the new drive was on my desk. All hot swap, the
users never would have known.
Lots to consider......
Kevin
it is no skin off my nose that dell likes intel. dell just happens to
use inferior quality hard drives that run at 10,000 rpm instead of
15,000 rpm hot swap scsi screamers. there's a direct correlation
between hard drive rpm and speed of server. you pay a premium to get
the speed yet get pay back every day when employees get their work done
faster.
dell's service really blows grits when you have to spend 30 minutes on
the phone explaining that the hard disk needs replacement when you hear
ker chunka chunk chunk noises. then, you have to wait 3 days to get the
replacement part if you are still inside the whopping 90 day warranty.
i like our n3 server because a little lit goes off and a beeper sounds
to let you know the hot spare is automatically kicking in. me thinks
the manufacturer has a 5 year warranty as well.
of course, there are those that want to go straight to dell. don't pass
go. don't collect $200.
regards,
jim
Jim Ray, President
Neuse River Network, Inc.
tel: 919-838-1672 x111
http://www.Neuse.Net
Ask about our Clean Technologies. Established in the Carolinas 1997.
Matthew Lavigne wrote:
Jim,
You do realize that with the exception of any of the alienware systems
or AMD systems that Dell may sell, Dell is firmly an Intel shop.
Meaning that the motherboards that they sell are Intel reference design
and are generally the board that Intel recommends to the vendors to
use. As far as cheap, my guess is if you buy any GigByte boards then
you are most likely using what Dell is (as the last time that I checked
that was who they were using to build the Intel reference boards for
them).
Just a point of clarification.
Matthew
Soon to be in New York looking for a new LUG.
Jim Ray wrote:
my argument for folks spending $4000+ for a real server is as follows.
here is the one we sell that has the necessary hardware under the hood
for an entry level small business running linux or winders:
http://www.neuse.net/server
the first point brings up the insurance argument. do you have
insurance for your business? of course, you do. everyone does (or at
least should). so, the RAID5 with hot spare, redundant power supplies
and ECC memory insure risk of downtime and data loss.
as for optiplex vs dimension, i stay away from both and am partial to
intel motherboards because i've been working with their chips since
1981 when the SDK85 with a whopping 8085A processor came out. i don't
care who stamps their name on the front. dell likes cheap and fast.
i like local and high quality. fact of the matter is that i can get
local and high quality cheaper than dell as well.
if they've got budget for the expensive UPS, they've got budget for a
real server.
just my $0.02.
hth,
jim
Jim Ray, President
Neuse River Network, Inc.
tel: 919-838-1672 x111
http://www.Neuse.Net
Ask about our Clean Technologies. Established in the Carolinas 1997.
Brian Henning wrote:
That's fair, and I'll answer it honestly.
Partly, it's due to my inexperience and shortcomings as a
salesperson. At
this point, I'm not very good at making a convincing argument for a
$3,000
machine that, on the surface, appears to do no more than a
similarly-spec'ed
$500 machine. (Yes. What I described is essentially a desktop-grade
machine in a server case.)
The second factor is the person to whom I have to make the sale. In
this
particular company, the concept of opportunity cost is almost
unknown. If I
spend $500 on parts, and yet end up devoting 100 hours out of the
next year
to direct service of said parts, he still feels like he's come out
ahead.
(and in fact, at my current pay scale, compared to a $3,000 capital
investment, for those numbers he does come out quite a bit ahead,
opportunity cost notwithstanding). In this company, for example, we
buy
Dimensions instead of Optiplexes except in the case of incentive
programs
such as UPS' Customer Technology Program. This company would rather
spend
two weeks to a month every year cyclically creating new QuickBooks
company
files and jumping through the hoops necessary to carry critical data
over
(as well as creating the headaches of tracking previous transactions)
than
put down the up-front cost of a financial system that can better
handle the
stress of a business which lives largely in the retail market (where
we can
easily have a customer list that grows by 15,000 in a year).
Gradually the mentality of the company is changing. We now have a
proper
2500VA UPS system in our network closet, rather than the two or three
desktop UPSes that used to live in there. But the closet (which now
houses
six computers, the UPS, and our PBX equipment) is still being
(ineffectively) cooled by a mildew-filled sputtery 20-year-old
window-unit
air conditioner, despite my continuing suggestions that the A/C can't
keep
up with the heat output of the equipment. It's a smallish company,
with a
strongly-entrenched small-company mentality.
So there's the long answer. The short answer is "it's what makes the
boss
happy right now."
Cheers,
~B
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Behalf Of Kevin Flanagan
Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 7:09 PM
To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Flaking PSU?
So,
I've got to ask the question, if you wanted a server, why didn't
you
buy one. I don't see anything that you are doing in the system you
listed out that couldn't be done in a desktop. If you pay the
premium
you get quality and service. If you add up all of the parts, and
your
time, will you really end up saving dough over buying a "name
brand" server?
Just my $.02
Kevin
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