Dell Support and NetBSD?

Greetings all.  Is anyone here running production NetBSD
systems on Dell 
hardware?  If so, what have your experiences been with the
support staff 
when hardware fails?

Thank you,

Michael

Michael Gorsuch kirjoitti:
> Greetings all.  Is anyone here running production
NetBSD systems on Dell 
> hardware?  If so, what have your experiences been with
the support staff 
> when hardware fails?

At work we have several Dell PowerEdge servers (currently in
active use model 
numbers 750, 1800, 1850, 2400, 2600 and 2850) and so far
only one (of two 
available) power supply has failed from the old PE2400 

So I'm very happy with the hardware (including hardware RAID
controller -- we 
have both SCSI and SATA) but I have only once needed on-site
support...

All these are running NetBSD 3.x.

Martti

Michael Gorsuch <mgorsuchfogcreek.com> wrote:
> Greetings all.  Is anyone here running production
NetBSD systems on Dell 
> hardware?  If so, what have your experiences been with
the support staff 
> when hardware fails?

 At my day job at the central IT department for a very large
public
University in the U.S., my department has somewhere around
50-100 Dell
servers, particularly 2650s and 2850s.  I believe the
Windoze guys have
had some serious problems with a Dell re-badged (made by
someone else, but
sold with a Dell name logo) FCAL-based disk array. They were
down for a
very unpleasant amount of time as a result.  I think part of
this was due
to departmental penny-pinching and ending up with some disk
arrays that
had been EOLd.  But part of the problem was Dell's support.

 Within my own group, which runs only Unix-y machines, i
believe we have
about 15-20 Dell 2650s that run FreeBSD and Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, and
i'd say they are average reliability.  There have been one
or two machines
with consistent problems with their hardware RAID, but i
don't recall any
other problems.  This is a slightly higher failure rate than
our Sun
hardware. Please keep in mind that my primary responsibility
is to manage
an application that runs on Suns, so this is second hand
information.

 I have not interacted directly with Dell, but based on my
coworkers'
descriptions, their support is average, or maybe slightly
below average.

 Keep in mind we are located in Austin, TX, Dell's HQ, for
whatever that's
worth.

In a separate reply to your message, someone mentioned a
comparative
survey that ranks x86 vendors as: IBM, HP, Sun, and Dell.
The URLs are:

h
ttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/27/gcg_server/
http://gabrielconsultinggroup.com/pressrelease20060620
.php

 I know at least one large shop that selected IBM x86
servers primarily
because IBM's support of Linux is "very good." 
This was described to me
as IBM ensuring that Linux has solid drivers for the IBM x86
machines by
the time my colleague was setting up the new IBM x86
machine.

 That may have affected the survey results in ways that
would not be
relevant to someone selecting x86 hardware that will run
NetBSD.

 -johan

Hello Martti,


>Michael Gorsuch kirjoitti:
>>Greetings all.  Is anyone here running production
NetBSD systems on 
>>Dell hardware?  If so, what have your experiences
been with the 
>>support staff when hardware fails?
>
>At work we have several Dell PowerEdge servers
(currently in active 
>use model numbers 750, 1800, 1850, 2400, 2600 and 2850)
and so far 
>only one (of two available) power supply has failed from
the old PE2400 
>
>So I'm very happy with the hardware (including hardware
RAID 
>controller -- we have both SCSI and SATA) but I have
only once 
>needed on-site support...
>
>All these are running NetBSD 3.x.
>
>Martti


I have run NetBSD for a many years on inexpensive, generic
i386 
hardware.  My company recently purchased some Dell servers
(PowerEdge 
860 with SATA h/w RAID1 SAS 5/iR) and I am looking forward
to placing 
NetBSD 3.1 on them.

However, I am unable to find a driver for the SAS 5/iR
hardware RAID 
controller that is specific to NetBSD.  I have seen comments
to the 
effect that there are OpenBSD drivers that may be adapted to
NetBSD 
someday, but I hope that your comments above indicate that
there is 
something available now.

Can you tell me, is your "hardware RAID
controller" a SAS 5/iR, 
running SATA drives?  If so, what driver are you using?  If
not, can 
you tell me what RAID hardware you have that is supported by
existing 
NetBSD drivers?

Thanks,
Roy Flacco 

On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 10:38:56AM -0400, Michael Gorsuch
wrote:
>Greetings all.  Is anyone here running production NetBSD
systems on Dell 
>hardware?  If so, what have your experiences been with
the support staff 
>when hardware fails?

the only time I called dell for a box with unix on it, they
where
very helpful directing me to 3rd party websites for tools to
update the bios without installing windows.

the install media that comes with the machines generally has
bootable hardware diagnostic software. so I think you could
verify
failure for replacement pretty directly with that.

I don't know how much the extra support costs but the gold
(I
think it's called) support people speak english well and
where
fast and smart compared to regular dell support which hasn't
been
all bad -- I like the webchat support the best, you don't
need to
call them anymore.

All that said. I don't like dell hardware, but I can see
it's a
good choice in some places.

// George


-- 
George Georgalis, systems architect, administrator
<IXOYE><

Roy Flacco wrote:

> Can you tell me, is your "hardware RAID
controller" a SAS 5/iR, running
> SATA drives?  If so, what driver are you using?  If
not, can you tell me
> what RAID hardware you have that is supported by
existing NetBSD drivers?

Right now there's no NetBSD driver for either SAS 5/iR or
PERC 5/i. I have one
server with PERC 5/i so right now I'm forced to use FreeBSD
on it (with pkgsrc
of course .

This is other hardware RAID we have here:

Dell PowerEdge 1800 (CERC 1.5/6ch = hardware SATA RAID)
-------------------------------------------------------
aac0 at pci3 dev 9 function 0: Dell CERC SATA RAID 1.5/6ch
aac0: interrupting at irq 11
aac0: i80303 at 100MHz, 64MB mem (48MB cache), optional
battery not installed
aac0: Kernel 4.1-0 [Build 7417], Monitor 4.1-0 [Build 7417],
S/N C2BFED
aac0: Controller supports:
1097c<WCACHE,DATA64,HOSTTIME,RAID50,WINDOW4GB,SOFTERR,ALA
RM>
ld0 at aac0 unit 0: RAID 1 (Mirror)
ld0: 148 GB, 19448 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x
312432384 sectors

Dell PowerEdge 1800 (PERC 4/SC = hardware SCSI RAID)
----------------------------------------------------
amr0 at pci2 dev 5 function 0: AMI RAID <PERC 4/SC>
amr0: interrupting at irq 11
amr0: firmware 351S, BIOS 1.10, 64MB RAM
ld0 at amr0 unit 0: RAID 1, optimal
ld0: 69880 MB, 8908 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x
143114240 sectors

Dell PowerEdge 2600 (PERC 4/Di = hardware SCSI RAID)
----------------------------------------------------
amr0 at pci8 dev 8 function 0: AMI RAID <PERC 4/Di>
amr0: interrupting at irq 11
amr0: firmware 251S, BIOS 1.07, 128MB RAM
ld0 at amr0 unit 0: RAID 1, optimal
ld0: 136 GB, 17834 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x
286511104 sectors


All these were with Dell provided RAID controllers. Then we
have also few
servers with add-on RAID cards like this:

Dell PowerEdge 2400 (Adaptec 3200S = hardware SCSI RAID)
--------------------------------------------------------
iop0 at pci1 dev 6 function 1: I2O adapter <ADAPTEC
3200S>
iop0: interrupting at irq 5
iop0: configuring...
dpti0 at iop0 tid 0: DPT/Adaptec RAID management interface
ld0 at iop0 tid 522: <ADAPTEC, RAID-1, 370F> direct
access, fixed
ld0: 17366 MB, 8820 cyl, 64 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x
35565568 sectors
ld1 at iop0 tid 523: <ADAPTEC, RAID-1, 370F> direct
access, fixed


All these servers are "rock solid" running NetBSD
3.1. The disk speed is good
and I have had zero problems with these controllers (and now
only 1 broken disk
since 1999 -- this happened last week on the PE2400 where
one 72 GB disk failed).

Martti