[CentOS] DL380g8 - smart array B320i - CentOS 6.4

[James B. Byrne]

On Mon, July 1, 2013 14:03, John R Pierce wrote:
> On 7/1/2013 10:57 AM, Nathan Duehr wrote:
>> DRM'ed server hardware.  Pure evil.
>
> why is that evil?   why should you pay for features you're not using?
>

Actually, firmware control of system features has been part of HPQ's
business practice for as long as I can remember.  The HP3000 series of
MPE/iX mini computers ran on exactly the same hardware as the HP9000
HP-UX systems, but were priced considerably higher than their HP9000
equivalents.  However, one could not simply run MPE/iX on the HP9000
hardware.  One had to pay HPQ to come in and run a system utility that
reset a flag on the processor to enable that.  On the other hand, one
could run HP-UX on the HP3000 hardware without requiring any changes.

A similar thing applied to processor speeds. HPQ would typically
release a family of HP3000/HP9000 processors that differed only in
speed.  The trick was all the processors in the family were identical
other than the firmware settings.  The processing speed was throttled
by firmware switches that one could pay HPQ to turn off in order to
increase usable processor cycles. As far as I could ever discover the
clock speed was constant so one paid the same for the electricity and
a/c whether one had the lowest or the highest processor speed.

Mind you, we no longer deal with HPQ or employ any of their hardware
because of these and similar experiences.  In fact, HPQ's business
practices are what turned our firm over to FOSS and commodity hardware
in the first instance (after using HPQ exclusively for 20+ years). 
Poisoning the well so to speak for any other name brand vendor.

Nice gear; company, not so much.

-- 
***          E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel          ***
James B. Byrne                mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca
Harte & Lyne Limited          http://www.harte-lyne.ca
9 Brockley Drive              vox: +1 905 561 1241
Hamilton, Ontario             fax: +1 905 561 0757
Canada  L8E 3C3