[CentOS] CentOS and Dell Support

[Matt Morgan]

On 12/4/05, Joe Landman <landman at scalableinformatics.com> wrote:
>
>
> Matt Morgan wrote:
> > I'm a fairly experienced RH and Fedora user and admin looking to try
> > CentOS for the first time. I have lots of experience with Dell servers
> > and I'd like to stick with them.
>
> Ok, though there are some other OEM and tier-* folks who might be able
> to get you good hardware.
>
> > Although I'm sure it's not always strictly enforced, Dell claims that
> > it won't provide warranty hardware support on servers installed with
> > an un-Dell-supported OS (basically, anything other Windows, RH, and
> > Suse).
>
> Yup.  Thats the way they play.
>
> We have to be able to support anything our customers run on, so we have
> quite a few OSes going.  We run our main servers on Centos, and our
> test/development stuff has a rather interesting multiboot environment.
>
> >  Are other CentOS admins successful in getting Dell to support
> > their hardware? How does it work--do you just tell them it's RH?
>
> You might not like this, but you start looking outside Dell for hardware
> or hardware support.
>
> > Also, any recommendations for which Dell PERC or Dell SATA RAID
> > adapters can I expect to work nicely with CentOS?
>
> Well, I can tell you which SATA RAID works well in our experience under
> Centos, and what is a big stinking pile of bits.  Our list isn't
> comprehensive (rather short).  Whether or not Dell supports either of
> them is another story.
>
> If you want to stick with Dell, you effectively negate any choices you
> may have for doing things in a non-Dell way.  This is the case with most
> of the large vendors.  That means, Dell approved stuff throughout the
> system.  HP used to do this with their laptops.  As soon as you plugged
> in a non-HP PCMCIA card, you could kiss support goodbye.
>
> This has more to do with how Dell and others want to drive the cost of
> support (comes right off their bottom line) down by minimizing
> variables, as compared to what actually will or will not work, and
> working to support their customers doing things outside the "norm" or in
> this case, outside the Dell way.  Not that there is anything wrong with
> Dell, just that they have to make choices about which business they are
> in and how they are going to go to market with support.
>
> If you don't like their choices, you can complain to them, or vote with
> your wallet.  If you stick with them, and you want support, you need to
> follow their rules.
>
> > If, on the other hand, Dell gives you trouble for CentOS installs, and
> > you have recommendations for other server vendors, let me know. In
> > particular, one that can provide on-site warranty support in Toronto,
> > Canada, would be great. I'm only interested in i386 architecture, by
> > the way.
>
> If you include AMD64/x86_64 in that group, have a good look at the Sun
> machines (v20z, x4100, x2100).   Their support is pretty good.  We use
> their gear for some of the clusters we build for customers who need high
> levels of hardware support, or short downtimes in the event of a failure.

Thanks. I hear what you're saying about playing inside the vendor's
rules. I just know that sometimes, you talk to sales people and they
say "no," while the tech support people say "yes." And sometimes it's
only because the sales people are kind of clueless and not actually
giving you the right answer.

Those Suns are a little high-end price wise for this job, and it's a
location without a rack so I, sadly, need a tower-shaped server (which
Sun doesn't seem to sell). ASL looked interesting; can I ask for
additional recommendations for "OEM and tier-* folks" selling hardware
they'll support when I put CentOS on it? Again, this is for a Toronto
location so someone who'll provide on-site support in Toronto would be
a huge plus.

Thanks again,
Matt