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Comment by harrytuttle | Hacker News Reader

Dell servers are shit. Currently trying to source a disk for a 3 year old poweredge which is stupid. Pay £700 for a Dell one or £122 fir a generic one but the array won't build with the generic one as the PERC doesn't like it (even though its the same model disk). Dell modify the firmware.

+1 for supermicro and they're fun to build as well as bomb proof

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Except Supermicro's remote management stuff locks up and requires a unit reset to get going again. That's hosed us more than once (across different servers, different timeframes, different datacenters, different providers).

Dell's done some dumb stuff, and the newer gen models are a nightmare to figure out (limiting number of disks for no reason, requiring 2.5" on some models but not others). Plus they gouge you to get a functional KVM ($300+?) But they've been far more reliable than Supermicro, in my limited experience.

Are you running the newest firmware on the PERC? The firmware used to limit you to only Dell certified drives but they removed that after about a year, probably due to backlash. I know we told our rep we wouldn't buy the new cards until they got rid of that.

I really want to get into the open hardware from Facebook, etc. I'd love cost-efficient boxes with the right security features (ideally, a super-cheap HSM) built in, along with either no RAID but enough SATA (to do sw raid), or areca or 3ware chips built-in. Being able to get good 10GE or 4x bonded GE support would be a huge plus, too.

The newest supported on the machines (they are quite old). We tried another vendors disk in it and the array rebuild failed.

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