[CentOS] a hardware question

[m.roth at 5-cent.us]

Rudi Ahlers wrote:
> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 9:49 PM,  <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
>> We need to replace several servers, quickly - four of our Dell PE 1950's
>> died in one week. (!!!) So, we're looking around, and I was checking out
>> IBM. I customized to what we want, and hit 'continue', and suddenly
>> there's another $800 for a "system common planar" that's "required".
>> Googling only finds specs with it - does anyone know what it is? I mean,
>> it's not like it's the motherboard, right?
>
> If you're not too brand-aware then I would highly recommend
> SuperMicro. We also switched over to SuperMicro a few years ago after
> having just too many problems with Dell, to keep clients happy. I've

Actually, we really like Dell. The servers that died are four or five
years old, and were only under a now-expired warranty. All had the same
error (E171F PCIE fatal error B0 D3 F0), which indicates a pci-x error,
which is weird. And that all of them failed within a week suggests, to me,
a firmware error, maybe a counter that rolled over, or ran past the end.

And I not only got a Dell rep to chat about it, he even opened a case,
knowing they were out of warranty. Maybe it's 'cause we're US gov't, but
still....

> never looked back since. They're hardware is top quality and and to
> confusing in terms of the terminology they use. It's so easy that even
> our junior techs could build them :) And their chassis are not flimsy,
> or "over-crowded" as many other brands sometimes are.

The other brand we've bought is Penguin, who are ok, too.

         mark "with a cute, fuzzy penguin w/ each server..."