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Date:      Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:15:58 -0600
From:      Paul Schmehl <pauls@utdallas.edu>
To:        chris neill <chris@revolt.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: [Opinions Wanted] Dell PowerEdge 2950 Servers ...
Message-ID:  <513A87DF5FD44FA668A656F7@utd59514.utdallas.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20070126153506.GA78392@dan.emsphone.com>
References:  <226ae0c60701260641x1419b19ck6a073c637d452423@mail.gmail.com> <20070126145301.GA15871@revolt.com> <20070126153506.GA78392@dan.emsphone.com>

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--On Friday, January 26, 2007 09:35:06 -0600 Dan Nelson=20
<dnelson@allantgroup.com> wrote:

> In the last episode (Jan 26), chris neill said:
>> On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 09:41:19AM -0500, David Robillard wrote:
>> > IMHO, the problem with Dell is not their hardware, but their
>> > support (or lack of it).
>>
>> Ditto -- We had a (duh) PERC 3/di go south on a PE2550 and getting
>> Dell to fix it was like pulling teeth. Once I finally leaned on them
>> enough to get them to agree to an RMA, I had to wait until the next
>> day for the part to be courried to my datacenter (which was a slight
>> gaff, since they don't usually do S&R), and another couple of hours
>> for the guy to show up.
>
> Maybe it depends on you you end up talking to.  We recently had a PERC
> 4e/Di go bad in one of our PE2800s.  Dell sent us a new motherboard
> same day and we replaced it ourselves in 2 hours (took so long only
> because we had never done it before).  It did ship with an out-of-date
> BIOS, though, so it took a while to flash everything up.

It surely must.  We have hundreds of Dell servers of every size, shape and=20
description and have never had any trouble at all with support.  We call,=20
them the part that's bad, and they express it to us right then.  We've even =

had parts "hand-delivered" from Austin by our rep.   I think the key is to=20
bypass 1st tier, which you can easily do by asking your rep for the 2nd=20
tier #.  We've found the Dell's to be extremely reliable  (we just retired=20
a six-year-old server because we were concerned that the drives might start =

failing), and we often sign up for additional support after the initial=20
three-year warranty period has expired.

I personally maintain a Dell (PowerEdge 500!) that is about five or six=20
years old (don't recall exactly), and the only failure I've had a single=20
drive.  (I took the opportunity to upgrade to 5.4 at the time.)

Paul Schmehl (pauls@utdallas.edu)
Senior Information Security Analyst
The University of Texas at Dallas
http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/

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