Opinions Wanted: Dell PowerEdge Servers ... ?

[Mike Galvez]

On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 11:24:54AM -0400, Jerry McAllister wrote:
> > 
> > Mike Galvez wrote:
> > [ ... ]
> > > No small thing you need to consider when choosing Dell is that they DO NOT support
> > > FreeBSD. They support Windows and Red Hat Linux. If the machine is not lights-out
> > > and the OS is not one of the above, they will not send parts or a technician.
> > > 
> > > I found this out the hard way and had to load Linux on a spare drive just to prove
> > > a piece of hardware was failing.
> > 
> > I've heard that Dells tech support isn't as helpful as it used to be, but I've 
> > had them replace a CD-ROM drive and a 4mm DAT tape backup on Dell machines 
> > dedicated to FreeBSD without any problems.
> > 
> > Try running the diagnostic CD or floppy that came with the machine?
> > (Or can be downloaded for the specific system type from the Dell website.)
> 
> Dell support grumbles a bit, but they have replaced tapes, disks, SCSI
> controllers and even mother boards on our machines running FreeBSD.

My problem was with my backup server being FreeBSD and running AMANDA. The Powervault
autoloader was generating SCSI errors. After I setup AMANDA on Linux and got the same
errors, they were willing to replace the Powervault autoloader. 

With the new autoloader in place, I replaced the Linux OS with the same instance of FreeBSD
I was using before. No more SCSI errors. 

All of this took more time than it should have. 

> 
> ////jerry
> 
> > -- 
> > -Chuck
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