Re: Reliability recommendations

On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 12:44, Christopher Browne wrote:
> After takin a swig o' Arrakan spice grog, jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com ("Joshua D. Drake") belched out:

> > You should probably review the archives for PostgreSQL user
> > experience with Dell's before you purchase one.
>
> Hear, hear! We found Dell servers were big-time underperformers.
>
> Generic hardware put together with generally the same brand names of
> components (e.g. - for SCSI controllers and such) would generally play
> much better.

My experience has been that:

A: Their rebranded LSI and Adaptec RAID controllers underperform.
B: Their BIOS updates for said cards and the mobos for the 26xx series
comes in a format that requires you to have a friggin bootable DOS
floppy. What is this, 1987???
C: They use poorly performing mobo chipsets.

We had a dual P-III-750 with a REAL LSI RAID card and an intel mobo, and
replaced it with a dual P-IV 2800 Dell 2600 with twice the RAM. As a
database server the P-III-750 was easily a match for the new dell, and
in some ways (i/o) outran it.

We also had a dual 2400 PIV Intel generic box, and it spanked the Dell
handily at everything, was easier to work on, the parts cost less, and
it used bog standard RAID cards and such. I would highly recommend the
Intel Generic hardware over Dell any day.