Re: Dell versus Asus?
- From: "Patrick L. Parks" <1H8Comcast@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 20:43:07 -0400
Leythos wrote:
In article <EsKdnTRoAIx1bnrfRVn-3w@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, 1H8Comcast@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
With regards to high-end equipment;
I never made a mention of server equipment....manufacturers versus building your own. I work in a server environment and we have approx 350 rack mount servers. All Compaq/HP and IBM's. With servers, you pay for service. We have 4 hour or faster response time on everything we own. For us, downtime means lost revenue. Handbuilding a server with commodity parts is just not worth the risk to our business. And I can count on 1 hand the number of HP Proliant DL 380 Gen 1, Gen2, Gen3 and Gen 4's that we have had fail in the past 3 years. We might be paying more than we have to, but these things are rock/solid stable.
And there is no difference between your Dell/HP and one I can build for less than half from parts - in fact, the only difference is the warranty in most cases. Also, for less than half the cost I can afford to have a spare server on hand, fully setup and ready or for parts. In the case of many of our server farms, with 12~25 servers, we have a number of Dell 6600 series that are also duplicated by white-box servers with the same level of parts/performance and cost about 30% of what the Dell's did - which has saved the development teams a lot of money.
I have several Proliant Dual CPU servers in my home, and they are very loud, but that was a choice based on the vendors design, not a technical requirement - I have Dual and Quad servers that move just as much air and are whisper quiet.
I have one Dual P3/933 server build on an ASUS motherboard, running an 8 drive array on one channel and a 4 drive dual mirror on another, running 2000 server standard, that's been in operation for more than 3 years 24/7/365. Again, if you know how to spec the parts there is no physical or reliability difference between your branded servers and a white-box server.
If you can't afford 4 hours down time, you can afford a spare server - there is no difference in MTBF on the Dell/Companq/IBM servers and the ones you can build for yourself if you know what parts to spec properly.
Oh, and we had a Dell 6600 server with 4 hour onsite service, it died the first week we installed it - they had to make 5 trips out in order to get it running, so 4 hours is not a viable disaster recovery method. We had a spare development box that duplicated the 6600 installed in under 20 minutes and it's run the production databases for 2 years so far.
I just like trying to set the record staight for people who read these forums. While I agree you can build a great computer and get exactly what you want for a decent price, it's hard if not nearly impossible to beat the deals that Dell has to offer. It's not fair to slam a Dell simply because it is a Dell.
You will never find me slamming Dell without clear justification and I still buy Dell systems, we did 1.8 million with Dell last year alone.
What I take issue with is Dell selling the Dimension 2400 and calling it a computer :) I also take exception to people thinking that white-box servers are not reliable - it's not like the vendor that Dell buys from is making lower quality boards for everyone else.
I also know for a fact that I can purchase parts at very close to the same cost of a Dell and get standard fitting parts too.
As for your spec on the computer, we're very close and we're just not going to agree it appears.
I would like to clear something up. I never said that white-box servers performed poorly or couldn't be built in a manner to be effective. I simply stated that handbuilding servers in "our" business was not worth the risk.
Risk in this case is multifaceted;
1. anybody who has worked on computers long enough knows that sometimes different pieces of hardware just don't get along well. While I could research endlessly to try to ensure 100% compatability, I have a job to do. We generally leave the hardware compatability to the vendor and our servers have performed very well thus far. This leaves me time to be productive in other areas of my job.
2. The big companies generally tend to keep replacment parts on hand for many years after a server release. While I do agree that most commodity parts can be had cheaper, it may be hard to find a replacment part down the road if a problem does arise. In some ways having a cold spare available alleviates that concern, however when you have 300+ servers in production, it takes valuable time and resources to duplicate the effort to setting up the server twice and transferring services over to the cold spare.
3. what happens with the commodity hardware in the event of a recall on a part? We recently had a recall on some IBM motherboards. Unfortunately, the newer motherboards were not compatible with some installed cards, so IBM replaced the entire chassis for us at no cost. If you are building your servers from parts from multiple vendors, you aren't going to get an entire machine replaced because of a problem with a motherboard. I agree these types of things are rare.
Again, I don't doubt that great servers can be built for less cost. We simply have other things to do and leave server building up to the HP's and IBM's of the world. Because of the sheer number of servers we have, we do have several on hand not being used in the event of a total catastrophe. In fact, our enterprise systems are mostly clustered, located in multiple locations and traffic is split between the different nodes. Usually for us, 1 down server doesn't actually impact us hardly at all. But it's nice knowing that within 4 hours of making 1 phone call, somebody brings me a replacement part and the server is back up. Meanwhile, i can keep working on other tasks while I wait, rather than setting up cold spares and hunting for the hardware needed myself.
Finally, in terms of the desktop, I simply stated that it is hard to beat the price on a Dell. Your original post ascertained that you could "always have a faster, better performing machine, with better parts, then the same cost of the similarly equipped packaged machine". Nothing has been stated which shows that the machine will "always be faster and will perform better". You mention, "better parts", I combat this by saying that my Dell has a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS and a Radeon X800XT 256MB PCI-Express video card. You simply maintained that you have 6 channel sound and a video card wtih 256MB of RAM. I'd like to know exact makes and models so we could compare. You might found out that my machine actually runs "a little faster" with the hardware that I have in mine.
Yes, you can build a machine for close to the same as you can buy a Dell. But years ago, you used to be able to build machines that performed much better for a fraction of the cost. This is simply not true today. Its much harder to actually beat Dell. You might come close, but to stay at the price of lower, you will likely have to cut some corners.
Again, don't take any of this as a personal attack against you. you clearly have your crap together. I just love to argue this point with people.
.
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