On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 9:31 PM, Kai Schaetzl <maillists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> RobertH wrote on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:15:03 -0800:
>
>> DL380 G3 Dual
>
> And how does he squeeze that in 1U?
>
> AFAIR, Rudi's located in South Africa and has already stated several times
> that prices there for servergrade stuff are not as cheap as you can get it
> in some other areas of the world. May apply for Ebay deliveries to SA as
> well (if they ship at all to SA). And, looking at the Ebay ads, I sure
> wouldn't buy such a machine.
> I can understand that Rudi builds his own servers in that situation, I do
> this sometimes as well. One thing what I would have avoided if possible,
> though, is buy a board with such a new chipset that you can't even get
> lm_sensors to run. (Or you didn't research too well, Rudi. You can upgrade
> lm_sensors from rpmforge and you can get coretemp.ko patches for some
> chipsets. I had to do this myself for an "oldish" Intel 5000 server
> chipset.) That's another thing where server-grade stuff comes nice into
> play: the machines usually include BMC, so you are not dependant on
> lm_sensors and kernel.
>
> Kai
>
> --
> Kai Schätzl, Berlin, Germany
> Get your web at Conactive Internet Services: http://www.conactive.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
Hi Kai,
It's as you stated, server grade hardware are a) rather expensive in
South Africa, b) very limited in terms of what we can actually get,
and c) crappy support from vendors.
I'd LOVE to purchase some SuperMicro servers, but there's only 1
supplier in South Africa, and they clearly state that they don't sell
loose components which is a problem, since they RAM, HDD's & CPU's are
approx 30 - 50% more expensive than from other suppliers, for the
exact same components. They also won't allow you (me) to upgrade the
server myself, I need to take it in to them and they do it. They are
also the only people who are allowed to even work on the machines. I
don't like this very much, and don't see the benefits in supporting a
monopoly like this. From Dell's side the support is almost the same,
but they didn't have a problem with the fact that I upgraded the HDD &
RAM myself. I got the components cheaper from another supplier /
importer / retailer than from Dell directly. And really, how can
KingMax RAM or Seagate HDD's from one supplier be better than from
another supplier? I only use the recommended types, i.e ECC (non
registered), and Seagate RAID edition SATAII HDD's.
The motherboard I now have, was the only one I could find at that time
which wasn't XEON, and had 4 memory slots. Since most suppliers who
sell these kind of motherboards don't keep the nice ones in stock, I
need to take what I can get. I honestly didn't even think of checking
to see if lm_sensors will work with it. All the other motherboards,
even the Socket 775 server boards either had 2 memory modules, or had
to be ordered & will take 2 weeks to get here.
The problem is, that I already spend a lot of money on this "server",
and it can't be taken back for a credit return even, only for
swap-outs of the exact same components, and I need to use it. To get a
new server will mean a whole new server from Dell or the Super Micro
stuff, which like I said would work out between 30 - 50% more than the
exact same components I now have. In fact, the Super Micro doesn't
come with a Q9300, but with a Q6600 - which by chance is 15% more
expensive than what I paid for the Q9300.
Ebay isn't an option, purely cause of the import duties in our
country, and if I did import it, how / wherw would I find support /
replacement components for it? The suppliers here will only support
servers which was purchased from them. I have tried this route
already. I told the one guy that I got server from someone else and
need to replace the motherboard. "Sorry, we can't support you, since
you didn't purchase it from us" - or something to that sense was the
response.
I'm sitting with a very expensive paper weight right now, and I don't
know what todo. The same websites are running very well on a machine
with a Gigabyte G31MX-S motherboard + 4GB DDRII 800 RAM + C2D 6750
CPU. This is what baffles me, how can the same load on a slower
machine work fine, but on the faster one not?
--
Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers
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