A word of warning

[edie209]

I came back to work yesterday only to hear a horible bleeping noise as I approached the server room, my heart sank :cry: and not without reason. On entering the server room our Dell Poweredge 2850 Exchange server was looking very poorly. All five raid drives were flashing amber and on further investergation no drives were able to accessed even through the raid controller software.

So I phoned Dell as it was still under waranty, it took nearly 40 mins just to speak to a human then i was passed around the building, until someone was prepared to take the call.

This very clever man proceeded to tell me that all five drives must have failed and I would need to reinstall 8O , when I said that I thought it might be the controller he scoffed, but I insisted, so rather than send out a Dell Techie he asked if I wouldn't mind opening up the server. Well that was not a problem but I had to wait for Dell to ask warranties and all that. Well after removing and reseating the Raid controller I was able to get access to one of the drives. So matey from Dell said I would still need to reinstall as the other drives were U/S I still disagreed with him and removed and replaced all the drives, and would you believe it all drives were now available in the RAID conroller software they were offline but they were there. I forced all the drives online and the server was back up and running.

Well what I'm really trying to say here is DON'T format a server until you have no other option, and these so called experts on the end of a phone line how much do they really know? not alot I think the guy I was speaking to put me on hold countless times to check my questions.

Anyway all well that ends well

[GrumbleDook]

Please, please, please make sure you write this up when you get the emailed like to the Dell Customer Satisfaction survey that they are meant to send out with each support call based on issues covered under warranty. If you have not received the email within 3 days call Dell customer services and request why.

Dell will only improve things if they get told it is poor, but they will track down and have a gentle word with useless help-desk drones.