On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 04:17:54PM -0600, howard_sho...@dell.com wrote: > Thank you very much for your comments and feedback regarding exclusive use of > Dell drives. It is common practice in enterprise storage solutions to limit > drive support to only those drives which have been qualified by the vendor. > In the case of Dell's PERC RAID controllers, we began informing customers > when a non-Dell drive was detected with the introduction of PERC5 RAID > controllers in early 2006. With the introduction of the PERC H700/H800 > controllers, we began enabling only the use of Dell qualified drives. > > There are a number of benefits for using Dell qualified drives in particular > ensuring a positive experience and protecting our data. > > While SAS and SATA are industry standards there are differences which occur > in implementation. An analogy is that English is spoken in the UK, US and > Australia. While the language is generally the same, there are subtle > differences in word usage which can lead to confusion. This exists in storage > subsystems as well. As these subsystems become more capable, faster and more > complex, these differences in implementation can have greater impact. > > Benefits of Dell's Hard Disk and SSD drives are outlined in a white paper on > Dell's web site at > http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pvaul/en/dell-hard-drives-pov.pdf
So don't support installations that use non-Dell disks. But don't pee all over me and tell me it's a warm, gentle rain. Dell is at the bottom tier of server hardware, and is popular with people who don't have the budget for IBM, Sun, HP, etc. That means people and companies who are more likely to consider the hardware a one-off purchase and walk away. Dell makes money selling the server, but is NEVER going to see a continuing revenue stream in endless enterprise support contracts and such. If you tell those people that they can never hit the secondary market to upgrade, they're probably going to drop down to the white box level rather than ante up more money so they can keep the Dell name. And anyone who is going to go ahead and pony up is going to take a long, hard look at IBM and HP, and you're going to lose some sales for no good reason. Personally, in my current job, this doesn't directly bother me. I don't worry about hardware acquisition costs. I want more disks, I say I want more disks, more disks show up. But, indirectly, this bothers me, and leaves a shadow on Dell's name. My next job might very well be like my last couple of jobs, where I do have to care about hardware costs. Will it be worth it to me to just pay the grossly inflated prices for Dell disks, or will I go Supermicro, or will I go HP? I don't know. For years, though, I have known... I've been happy to buy at Dell's price point, accept some shortcomings in management and remote access in return for what's been a pretty darn good hardware deal. But if I go into a shop that uses a lot more spindles... bye bye Dell. -- *********************************************************************** * John Oliver http://www.john-oliver.net/ * * * *********************************************************************** _______________________________________________ Linux-PowerEdge mailing list Linux-PowerEdge@dell.com https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge Please read the FAQ at http://lists.us.dell.com/faq
