1U servers..

bscott at ntisys.com bscott at ntisys.com
Tue Apr 27 12:39:01 EDT 2004


On Tue, 27 Apr 2004, at 12:02pm, travis at scootz.net wrote:
> That alone would make me say no thanks to buying it.

  Most 1U systems tends to have some kind of funkiness to them.  That's the
price you pay for stuffing hardware into such a small form-factor.  In
particular, the CD/FDD are very often non-standard.  The only exceptions to
this that I've seen are when someone takes a generic motherboard and just
stuffs it into a generic 1U case, which generally yields a pretty poor
feature set, plus a tendency for thermal problems.

  That being said, Compaq (which is where the design for the "HP" Proliant
in question came from) is notorious for gratuitous incompatibilities. So it
may not be as bad with other systems.  But in general, expect some
funkiness, or don't buy a 1U.

  FWIW, Dell makes some decent 1U servers.  One of them "starts" at $600,
although that's after rebates and before shipping and taxes.  That does
include 3-year on-site NBD warranty service, though.

  One word of warning: Dell sometimes uses hardware which is only supported
by binary-only drivers on Linux.  That's generally not an issue if you're
running one of the two big commercial distros (SuSE or Red Hat), but it can
be a real problem if you're not.  Of course, Dell is hardly alone in this.

  In general (in life, not just with computers), the more you ask, the
higher the price.  So you have to decide where on the price/convenience
graph you want to be.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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