> From: Edward Ned Harvey > <opensolarisisdeadlongliveopensola...@nedharvey.com> > To: "'Khushil Dep'" <khushil....@gmail.com> > Cc: Richard Elling <richard.ell...@nexenta.com>, > zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org > Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] A few questions > Message-ID: <000201cbada5$a3678270$ea3687...@nedharvey.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > > From: Khushil Dep [mailto:khushil....@gmail.com] > > > > I've deployed large SAN's on both SuperMicro 825/826/846 and Dell > > R610/R710's and I've not found any issues so far. I always make a > point of > > installing Intel chipset NIC's on the DELL's and disabling the > Broadcom ones > > but other than that it's always been plain sailing - hardware-wise > anyway. > > "not found any issues," "except the broadcom one which causes the > system to crash regularly in the default factory configuration." > > How did you learn about the broadcom issue for the first time? I had > to learn the hard way, and with all the involvement of both Dell and > Oracle support teams, nobody could tell me what I needed to change. We > literally replaced every component of the server twice over a period of > 1 year, and I spent mandays upgrading and downgrading firmwares > randomly trying to find a stable configuration. I scoured the internet > to find this little tidbit about replacing the broadcom NIC, and > randomly guessed, and replaced my nic with an intel card to make the > problem go away.
20 years of doing this c*(# has taught me that most things only get learned the hard way. I certainly won't bet my career solely on the ability of the vendor to support the product, because they're hardly omniscient. Testing, testing, and generous return policies (and/or R&D budget).... > The same system doesn't have a problem running RHEL/centos. Then you're not pushing it hard enough, or your stars are just aligned nicely. We have massive piles of Dell hardware, all types. Running CentOS since at least 4.5. Every single one of those Dells has an Intel NIC in it, and the Broadcoms disabled in the BIOS. Because every time we do something stupid like let ourselves think "oh, we could maybe use those extra Broadcom ports for X", we get burned. High-volume financial trading system. Blew up on the bcoms. Didn't matter what driver or tweak or fix. Plenty of man-days wasted debugging. Went with net.advice, put in Intel NIC. No more problems. That was 3 years ago. Thought we could use the bcoms for our fileservers. Nope. Thought we could use the bcoms for the dedicated drbd links for our xen cluster. Nope. And we know we're not alone in this evaluation. We could have spent forever chasing support to get someone to "fix" it I suppose... but we have better things to do. > See my point? Next time I buy a server, I do not have confidence to > simply expect solaris on dell to work reliably. The same goes for > solaris derivatives, and all non-sun hardware. There simply is not an > adequate qualification and/or support process. I'm not convinced ANYONE really has such a thing. Or that it's even necessarily possible. In fact, I'm sure they don't. Cuz that's what it says in the fine print on the support contracts and the purchase agreements - "we do not guarantee..." I just prefer not to have any confidence for the most part. It's easier and safer. -bacon _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
