RE: [OT] Love you guys
Hey, I'm not trying to start a hardware religous war here, it was just an
observation. I have issues with some vendors myself. (Personally I hope Sun
Microsystems goes the way of the DoDo). I do work at a large company but I
certainly do NOT have unlimited budget. As for small company vs. large
company, there are tradeoffs to both. With a large company they typicaly
have the facilities to replace hardware (hard drives in an array for
example) that die down the line. With a smaller company and "standard"
parts you may not have that luxury. When a particular model end of lifes,
it is not always easy finding another drive with close enough drive geometry
to stick back in the array.
Anyway, like I said, I am not trying to start a debate here. Everyone is
entitled to their opinions, hence the beauty of freedom...
Barry deFreese
NTS Technology Services Manager
Nike Team Sports
(949)-616-4005
Barry.deFreese@nike.com
"Technology doesn't make you less stupid; it just makes you stupid faster."
Jerry Gregoire - Former CIO at Dell
-----Original Message-----
From: nate [mailto:debian-user@aphroland.org]
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 3:18 PM
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: RE: [OT] Love you guys
deFreese, Barry said:
> It's funny, all of you are saying "I don't like Compaq", "I wouldn't use
> Compaq", etc yet all of you state that after it was up and running, they
> run well!? I agree that they do some funny stuff with hardware, but some
> of it is a good thing. For example, they burn their own firmware into
> their hard drives for arrays, and then burn-test them for quite a while..
> That part is a good thing. I will admit that they do, do some wierd
> proprietary stuff but I have always had good luck with their servers.
> Except for the powersupplys on their little 1U servers, which are a joke!!
for me its more of a company thing rather then a product thing. I don't
like compaq's close relationship with MS, their history of having crappy
desktop products, propritary parts in their servers(when I ordered 2 new
cpus for my DL380 they came with this extra i think it was voltage
regulator,
and they costed like 3 times more then normal cpus, another example is I
had to spend about 2 hours flashing firmware and bios shit to get the
cpus working, luckily compaq stayed on the phone the whole time which was
nice). But what it really comes down to for me is the company. For different
reasons I do not purchase sony, toshiba, and many other brands where I can
(sometimes something is OEM'd and relabeled). Compaq's infection into
H/P isn't a pretty sight either, they put the final nail in the coffin
of the Alpha. Another thing was trying to get rails for my DL380, Compaq
tech support was real friendly and responsive but they were idiots. It
took 2 hours on the phone, and 3 days to get a rail kit, then that didn't
work, they sent out an onsite tech(free), took him another 20 minutes to
determine the rail kit that was sent to me was for Generation 2, and not
compadible with generation 1(I woulda thought since tech support had the
serial number of the server they could determine this). In the end I bought
a rolling shelf, about $10 less, easier to install, and useful for other
things if I decided to stop using the DL380.
I prefer small companies, with standard parts(so if 1 company goes out
of business I can get the parts elsewhere). I like the more personal
relationships and flexibility smaller companies offer. I am skilled enough
to really not need support most of the time. I have worked in companies
where there was never a support contract(too expensive), so all support
for servers fell on me.
I suppose if you work in a big company with an unlimited IT budget you
can afford to replace your 150 servers with 50 brand new
Dell/compaq/HP/IBM/whatever to 'reduce the cost of IT' with heavily inflated
support contracts, and hire paper MCSEs and other inexpereinced people to
run the network with the support contracts(thats what I think of when I see
those recent Dell commercials).
but I haven't worked at such a company. my former co worker used to
comment how I loved to spend money on hardware, and not spend money on
trying to get support or expensive software. At least hardware once it's
bought its owned for life..no forced upgrades, no auto renewing support..
lower costs. Of course it requires a dedicated team of IT people to build
the initial network(I spent many weekends and holidays and nights working
not because I had to but because I wanted to).
the result is the network performance and reliability went up by a huge
amount, recurring costs went through the floor, and management was happy,
so they laid me off, and closed the office which had the main server room
thinking the network could run itself without me (and to most extent it has
for the past 2 months, all it would take is a serious power outage at their
new site for half the network to fry itself when the AC fails though.).
I don't hold anything against them though they were a great company to
work for, my favorite job i've ever had!
nate
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