Re: Dell-Oracle-Linux: Anyone else run this...because its not working for us!
- From: Janine Sisk <janine@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: mkb125@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:09:08 -0800
On Nov 16, 2005, at 11:52 AM, mkb wrote:
Hehehehe...I just finished a call with Dell support -
memory issue for probably the 3rd time this year.
We are a much smaller shop than the rest of you and we run dinky
little servers by comparison, but even I have a Dell horror story.
We had one server we bought a few years ago, I think it was a 2550
but I'm not sure about that, that had hardware problems from day one.
I was trying to load a multi-GB Oracle export and the system kept
restarting itself halfway through. Dell very reluctantly sent
replacement parts several times but we were never able to get it
fully working. It has exhibited a multitude of symptoms over the years.
My sys admin is both busy and lazy and he didn't follow up very well
with Dell, plus they moved as slowly as humanly possible, with the
result that the machine finally went out of warranty and still was
not working right. We have never been able to use it in production.
The sys admin finally figured out what the root cause is some time
ago; he read somewhere that this particular hardware has disk
controller problems when you have two CPUs in the box and are running
Linux. It would probably work fine if we could take one of the CPUs
out, but you can no longer buy the appropriate blanks from Dell.
They know about the problem, but have never managed to fix it (not
that they are admitting to, anyway). I should say for the record
that this info is third-hand or worse and should not be relied upon
as the gospel truth, even though I have no reason to doubt it based
on our experience.
We have continued to buy servers from Dell (holding our noses each
time) because they have been the most cost-effective choice, even
with the hassle factor. But I have been reading lately that they are
telling analysts they are going to bump up their profit margins and
do less discounting. I almost hope that happens, just so I have an
excuse to buy from someone else!
janine
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