Unfortunately the problems that were described took several months to resolve. The issue was not with customer service, which appeared fairly responsive, the issue is that there were many repeated issues across multiple chassis and multiple parts. Part of the issue was firmware versions that did not function properly and new revisions had to be waited for. So this may have been a case of a bad crop of lemons but it clearly left one feeling like the product line, or at least that particular rev, was not ready for prime time. I think the issue with system board memory is simply a poor design. RAM is precious in multi-user environments and when the customer purchases and installs 4GB and only gets 3.17 this is a real limiting factor in the overall system performance and pretty clearly is poor design. Steve Greenberg Thin Client Computing 34522 N. Scottsdale Rd D8453 Scottsdale, AZ 85262 (602) 432-8649 www.thinclient.net steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx -----Original Message----- From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jeremy Saunders Sent: Friday, December 23, 2005 3:45 AM To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [THIN] Re: IBM blades for Citrix vs. HP DL360? What can I say??? I guess that even after the burn-in and QA process you are always going to get a failure or two. Many are due to freight. And unfortunately, your customer was the one. Was IBM, or the service agent, reactive enough to get this all fixed over a period of a couple of days? Nearly 20 years ago I bought a brand new Subrau 4WD and had heaps of problems with it over the first few months (gear box crunching and tyre wear were the main ones). Eventually, I personally got Subaru involved and threatened media involvement, as I wasn't happy with the answers I was getting from the service agent. Then the car got fixed. It didn't leave me with a bad taste for Subaru's, or the model of car I bought, in fact from then on it was perfect. But I was not impressed with the attitude from the staff at the service agent/dealer I bought it from, and would continue to bad mouth them to this day. What I'm trying to say that poor service is unacceptable. And you need to make sure you let the right people know, as you may not be the only one receiving it. It's also important that you sit down with one of the xSeries specialists and whiteboard all your concerns. Then you will understand why things are the way they are. I'm not that person, as I am in a similar boat to you. However, what I can do is forward something internally so that the sepcialist in your region will pay your customer a visit with you and go through these issues properly and professionally. I don't think it's acceptable that anyone should have an experience like this without the Vendor getting involved to at least apologise...if nothing else. Yeh...that memory one had me wondering why they had to do it that way? And it is an annoyance, but I have no idea if it's limitting or improving my functionality or performance at all. I'm not an expert on the hardware, so I have no idea if it's more efficient to do it this way. It's reserved for the PCI devices. But to design it this way means that they must know more about the memory requirements of the PCI devices than you or I. "The blades sometimes shutdown during a power cycle... The only way to bring it back is to pull in and reseat it in the chassis." - I assume this is now fixed and was part of the initial fault. "The passive backplane isn't really passive, thus forcing us to disable the switch when we want to reimage a server." - We've not found this at all. Was it a version of firmware that fixed it? "I'm not fond of the Web GUI it has for remote controlling the console, I think it's clumsy, the java applets bomb from time to time." - Fair enough. Most things Java have their problems. But I think alot of that is caused by the continual change in versions released by Sun. I'm finding that versions 1.4.2.06 and 1.4.2.10 have been 100% reliable. But your experiences with the IBM stuff sounds like my experiences with the HP stuff. I hope that goes someway towards an apology on IBMs behalf. :) Cheers. Kind regards, Jeremy Saunders Senior Technical Specialist Integrated Technology Services & Cerulean IBM Australia Level 2, 1060 Hay Street West Perth WA 6005 Visit us at http://www.ibm.com/services/au/its P: +61 8 9261 8412 F: +61 8 9261 8486 M: TBA E-mail: jeremy.saunders@xxxxxxxxxxx "Steve Greenberg" <steveg@thinclien t.net> To Sent by: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> thin-bounce@freel cc ists.org Subject [THIN] Re: IBM blades for Citrix 23/12/2005 01:40 vs. HP DL360? AM Please respond to thin Hi Jeremy, I work with Joe on the customer he is referring to and all the major parts have been swapped out and in the end most of the issues were eventuall resolved. However, it leaves one wondering why you had to go through it in the first place. Another annoyance to me is the fact that significant chunks of RAM are used up by on-board shared memory components so that a 4GB RAM system shows 3.17 available. Yes you can /PAE, etc. but why have to.... Steve Greenberg Thin Client Computing 34522 N. Scottsdale Rd D8453 Scottsdale, AZ 85262 (602) 432-8649 www.thinclient.net steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx -----Original Message----- From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jeremy Saunders Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2005 9:16 AM To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [THIN] Re: IBM blades for Citrix vs. HP DL360? I've never heard of, or experienced your issues Joe. You must have, what we refer to in Australia as a "lemon" or a dud. Have you spoken to anyone about these issues? I'm not a hardware tech, but it sounds like you've got a faulty backplane, or chassis. I wouldn't accept an answer if someone tells you that there is nothing wrong with it. Because clearly there is. A faulty product does not mean it's a bad product. I've also not had any problems with the Web GUI...and have found the Java stuff to be very stable. Could be the Java version you are running on the client. Your right James. I should be at that point, and I want to be at that point, but there are always too many other things to do and learn. I do a lot of IP Telephony, AD and Exchange as well. Kind regards, Jeremy Saunders Senior Technical Specialist Integrated Technology Services & Cerulean IBM Australia Level 2, 1060 Hay Street West Perth WA 6005 Visit us at http://www.ibm.com/services/au/its P: +61 8 9261 8412 F: +61 8 9261 8486 M: TBA E-mail: jeremy.saunders@xxxxxxxxxxx "Joe Shonk" <joe.shonk@gmail. com> To Sent by: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> thin-bounce@freel cc ists.org Subject [THIN] Re: IBM blades for Citrix 22/12/2005 10:45 vs. HP DL360? PM Please respond to thin It's weird that people have completely different experiences with the same hardware... Jeremy like the IBM HS20... I personally think they are crap. Power on 7 servers are you are already at 2100 watts. 100 watts over the ability to make that domain redundant. The blades sometimes shutdown during a power cycle... The only way to bring it back is to pull in and reseat it in the chassis. I'm not fond of the Web GUI it has for remote controlling the console, I think it's clumsy, the java applets bomb from time to time. The passive backplane isn't really passive, thus forcing us to disable the switch when we want to reimage a server... The build in cisco switch wasn't all that better. I think the problems with excessive vibrations has been solved. The list goes on and on... Joe -----Original Message----- From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James Lilly Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2005 7:29 AM To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [THIN] Re: IBM blades for Citrix vs. HP DL360? I guess I'm just used to running servers with no floppy, no CD, and no KVM switch. (We really managed everything through Altiris and the iLO with virtual floppys and CD's even before we went to blades, so the lack of those features never hurt us. You are absolutely right, it is a matter of personal preference. My list and yours just apparently goes in a different order. :) That's what keeps companies in competition*.my main beef with the HPs is the Rube Goldberg power distribution system they use for their bus bars in the back. :) James _____________________________________________ From: jeremy.saunders@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 5:41 PM To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [THIN] Re: IBM blades for Citrix vs. HP DL360? Interesting view James. Even though I work for IBM, we also deploy HP, Dell, etc. We are part of the service arm. I am infact a HP ASE. My experience has found that the HP blades are difficult to work with. The Java interface to the Advanced iLO is poor (mouse sync is a known issue), etc. The IBMs also have build in Floppy, CD and USB, and a KVM switch. The method to achieve this through the HPs always leaves me very frustrated. People tend to buy the HP blades due to the fact that they are a HP house, and are more interested in sticking with HP. But if I get a chance to demonstrate the two, customers then choose IBM. I think it all comes down to preferences and peoples aliances. Kind regards, Jeremy Saunders Senior Technical Specialist Integrated Technology Services & Cerulean IBM Australia Level 2, 1060 Hay Street West Perth WA 6005 Visit us at http://www.ibm.com/services/au/its P: +61 8 9261 8412 F: +61 8 9261 8486 M: TBA E-mail: jeremy.saunders@xxxxxxxxxxx "James Lilly" <LillyJ@xxxxxxxxx om> To Sent by: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, thin-bounce@freel <BClaus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ists.org cc Subject 21/12/2005 06:10 [THIN] Re: IBM blades for Citrix AM vs. HP DL360? Please respond to thin Place where I used to work picked the HP BL-series blades over the DL360's, IBM and Dell blades, and we were very happy with them. At the time, we had two fully-populated racks of them, and I'm sure in the two years since I've left that job, they have added more (and they still rave about them). We chose them because of: 1. Hot-swappable drives in the blade itself 2. Larger variety of networking options (in-chassis switch, in-chassis pass-through patch panel, in-chassis switch or patch panel with Fibre Channel) 3. HP beat the snot out of the other vendors in managablity (Altiris rocks*..plus, at that time, the built-in iLOs for remote-management allowed each blade to have a unique IP and connection for remote management, IIRC, the Dell and IBM had one remote connection per blade chassis.) The major knock against the IBMs for us was twofold: 1. Had some really, really bad experiences with the IBM 2U servers right before that in Linux-land. (x330 maybe, I can't remember the IBM model numbers, but I remember it was a 2U). 2. Their FC connectivity at that time made highway robbery look appealing. Any reason why you aren't looking at the HP BL-series to replace your DL360's? James _____________________________________________ From: BClaus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 3:56 PM To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [THIN] IBM blades for Citrix vs. HP DL360? Anyone want to chime in with their 2 cents on the IBM blade vs the HP DL360? We're currently using the DL360s but looking at the IBMs...just wondering if anyone had any stories to tell. 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