two bargains? MB+CPU; 1U server

[Mike Kallies]

Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 10:44:15PM -0700, Tyler Aviss wrote:
>> I haven't had a biostar mobo in recent years, but the one I had years ago
>> served faithfully.
>>
>> I loathe Dell desktops (non-standard parts, highly expensive replacements,
>> often crappy mobos), but we have mostly Dell servers at work, and they've
>> been pretty solid, not to mention speedy parts delivery, RMA (a few flakey
>> drives) etc. There's a definite divide between their corporate and consumer
>> service/components.
> 
> Unless it is 4 or 5 years old in which case Dell will take hours to even
> answer if they can help you.  After all, even their servers use rather
> non standard parts.
> 


Lennart, I'm curious, what kind of rack-mounted machines do you like?

In my experience every manufacturer and even every model of rack-mounted
hardware has its own quirks.  It's best to stick to one manufacturer and
as few different models as possible.  Every little thing like how to
report failures on redundant power, how Ethernet devices come up on
boot, how to use remote management cards, or how the device handles a
hot swap of a PS/2 keyboard/mouse, fan failures, temperature sensors,
how to monitor/rebuild your SCSI array, they're all different.

My point being, the question shouldn't be "should I buy this Dell server
because it is cheap?" but "how much research do I have to do to put this
thing in production, how much documentation do I have to write to
maintain it and if I need more, how much longer can I buy that model of
device?"

I don't mind Dell Desktops.  They have lots of non-stanard stuff, but
you're depending on Dell to honour their warranty... and while I dont'
deal with them a lot, I found their warranty and warranty service to be
okay.  I ask for parts.  They send them to me, I send the old ones back.


-Mike
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