On Sat, 3 Feb 2007, Jamie Bohr wrote:
The Super Micro's we bought three years ago are dieing right and left. We
are now buying Dell and quite happy. Dell system we bought 5 years ago are
still running.
Which is not evidence that newer Dell's will last as long as the ones they
sold 5 years ago.
Are those Super Micro's dying of leaking electrolytic capacitors?
I've seen too many leaky or bulging capacitors. One P-III system
refused to boot after a few capacitors showed signs of bulging tops. I
replaced the system board and set the old one aside. I recently took
another look -- after a year of sitting idle, all the electrolytics were
bulging, which suggests an aging process with a finite lifespan.
The Optiplexes we bought 5 years ago are all still running, with a couple
disk replacements. Optiplex and PowerEdge bought 3 years ago are much
less reliable, as are white box machines purchased at the same time.
Many components have 3-year warranties. It is hardly surprising that
moving parts are optimized for a 3-year working life, and there is no
reason for vendors to avoid components that tend to die shortly after 3
years. Some organizations are starting to ask for 4-year warranties. If
you want to know which machines are engineered to last, ask how much a
4-year warranty will cost.
At least if you run FC linux and your system dies every 3 years you don't
end up buying another copy of the OS. Windows users should ask
for a break on the software licenses when replacing failed machines.
In my experience, however, many organizations install linux on older
hardware that no longer performs acceptably running Win32.
--
George N. White III <aa056@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
