Props to old-school dell server!

[Oyeve]

So, I finally finished updating my job's server. These were Dell PowerEdge 2950 server. 6 of them. Ran for nearly 9 years straight. In those 9 years only one HD died but the raid 5 kicked in. Never had a PSU issue either. These were some kick-ass servers. The WD enterprise class drives were awesome.

Ironically, 1 week after being taken out of service and shut down, they don't power up any more. Put in a spare PSU and they booted right up. I guess after 9 years of being on, the original PSUs died.

 

[XavierMace]

Yeah, a lot of people underestimate the difference in component quality makes. We've got a lot of clients running HP and Dell servers of that age. Typically the only problems we see are controller batteries and drives.

 

[ultimatebob]

Yeah, Dell servers are pretty damn reliable. I have a bunch of 6 year old PowerEdge T110's out in the field, and those suckers never seem to die. They're in pretty rough environments, too, where they'll get exposed 80+ degree temperatures during summer.

 

[sm625]

Ironically, 1 week after being taken out of service and shut down, they don't power up any more. Put in a spare PSU and they booted right up. I guess after 9 years of being on, the original PSUs died.

All six of them didnt power up anymore, or jsut one?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Server grade hardware rocks.

 

[Oyeve]

All six of them didnt power up anymore, or jsut one?

All, save one. And on that one, only one PSU powered on.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah I've always had good luck with Dell. People rag on them as being low end as far as servers go but they seem to have the best balance of quality and price when it comes to prebuilt servers. IBM servers are rock solid too and probably even better, but you're also paying like 3x the price.

Only thing with Dell is I find they have a high DOA rate. If you're building a deployment on a tight schedule you want to give yourself time for the inevitable RMA you'll have to do if something does not work on arrival.

Most of my home servers are Supermicro though, I find they're cheaper, while still "enterprisy" but also more standard so I can use standard parts for ram, hard drives etc, which makes them more maintainable in the long run. Try building out a Dell server with like 32GB or more of ram and a couple TB of disk space and you're paying a ridiculous amount in just ram and disk alone, when ECC ram and high performance hard drives from a retailer like NCIX for a custom build will be much cheaper and probably just as good. But if you need a server for a specific purpose that does not require to add more ram/disk than the standard offer on their site then the pricing is pretty much comparable to Supermicro.

For something critical that also can't be built redundant, then it's probably better to go with something like Dell, due to the 4 hour SLA and what not, but for stuff that can be built with redundancy like VM servers then it almost makes more sense to go Supermicro, and just build more hosts for more power and redundancy.

 

[Oyeve]

Ive replace them with new Dells and went all enterprise SSD. Hopefully these will last half as long.

 

[Dahak]

I figure I will add / ask this here as there as some dell users here

I will add that I do not use Dell day to day, as we are an HP shop, but we do have some customers that we acquired that are running Dell.

But my main 2 issues so far are

1 - They dont have a parts list to easily find and purchase parts, like the HP QuickSpecs. (PDF Link Example)

2 - It took me a while to find how to get the firmware updates, like the HP ServicePack for Proliants, but found it eventually.

3 - Does not have a separate program for managing raids, have to do it within Server Manager.

If someone know, has links for 1 and 3 that would be great. Would make my life a bit easier


They just seem to make it a bit more difficult.

Hardware wise, I have no complaints