Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.

On My Blog Menu:

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Friday, August 9, 2002
21:42 - The Almighty Dollar	(top)
So I was just watching a Dell commercial selling PowerEdge servers, in which they're (naturally) put forth as the premier examples of 1U/2U server hardware; the servers in the ad that the IT person so wisely replaced are now employed as the components of a BattleBots-esque mechanical free-for-all in the parking lot. For the insight it takes to buy the cheapest solutions in the world, from the ubiquitous name Dell which covers him in the event of any mishaps, he's the Man of the Hour. Well, guys, I've now had some experience with PowerEdge servers, and I feel I can with some authority state that price isn't everything-- as I've said here so many times before-- even if it comes from a company that's big enough to sue if the products turn out to suck. I installed a PowerEdge 1500 server into our data-center about six months ago. About three weeks after installation, the gigabit Ethernet card failed; the kernel kept overflowing with checksum errors, and eventually it stopped responding altogether and I had to plug the server into another switch via one of its 10/100 cards. This week, I discovered that now it no longer can see that it has a CD-ROM drive. (At least it had the decency to say "No CD-ROM drive found" at the BIOS screen, where it also helpfully told me "The cover was previously removed" and forced me to press F1 to continue, not that this cleared the error or anything.) This caused me some displeasure as I tried to install the Legato client via the installation CD. But again, not fatal, as I was able to copy the RPM off the disc (using another machine) and FTP it over. I'm starting to get the feeling that this machine is slowly deteriorating, component by component, before it has even reached a year of age. Couple this with the fact that in our entire data-center full of rack-mount PowerEdge servers, each of which has an intricate front-panel locking mechanism which anchors in on one side and snaps into place on the other, and then locks in via a notch in the server's body when you turn the key, not a single machine has the front panel on properly. Every last one has been sort of awkwardly smushed into place and left there, in the hopes that nobody jostles the cabinet and all the front panels fall off. The panels are designed so ingeniously that even with the best efforts of our entire IT department and myself, it's impossible to get them attached properly. The IBM NetFinity servers that we used to use are so much better, in almost every way. No brain-dead front panel. No self-induced decrepitude in component quality. Cable-management arms and sturdy rails. (Hell, if it had a few more drive bays, a separate IDE channel per drive, an AGP4x slot, dual gigabit Ethernet, hot-swappable fans, and about half the heat signature and power consumption, it might even pass for an Xserve.) But no, the Dell costs like $100 less, so we have to standardize on it instead. I am so sick of this world being run by the attitude that quality and features are immaterial compared to cost, even (and especially) in the context of business. It's so much more effective, after all, to buy whatever's cheapest and then relegate the recovery from any potential failures to the legal department. Hey, you might even get rich off a settlement from the vendor! How's that for a one-time receivable to list in a non-pro-forma quarterly report? It's sickening enough when private individuals play the hot-coffee-in-the-lap card. But it's loathsome when entire industry sectors base their entire business plans on it.