Rm server Quote

[nicholab]

Is it me or is there not a lot of point having 2 quad cores in an RM server with 4Gbit of RAM. One of the server is going to be the new sims server. This ram limit is due to RM only supporting windows server not advanced.

Any comments?

[OutToLunch]

Well, if they're only going to put 512 megabytes of RAM in it's going to be a bit of a dog anyway...

Sorry, nit picking morning.

You're always going to get overspecced quotes, it's up to you whether you try or just go with it and have something that lasts you a bit longer / has future capacity.

[torledo]

Is it me or is there not a lot of point having 2 quad cores in an RM server with 4Gbit of RAM. One of the server is going to be the new sims server. This ram limit is due to RM only supporting windows server not advanced.

Any comments?

There's not a lot of point in going to RM for your server in the first place..
imho

[webman]

Why would that be, torledo?

[Butuz]

RM Servers are based on the Intel standard server range which means they are tested, and reliable, if a tad slower and sometimes slightly more out of date than some others.

IBM make the most reliable servers but they are expensive, RM are somewhere in the middle, Dell are cheap and fast but in my experience unreliable. Would like to try HP servers as I am very impressed with their Procurve switch range.

Overall you can't go particularly wrong with RM's servers. Just make sure you get some equivalent quotes from Dell / HP etc so you can lever RM's price down a tad.

Butuz

[torledo]

Why would that be, torledo?

In the x86 server market you can't really go wrong with either Dell or HP....particularly with Dell's Gen 9 pizza boxes. Dell support is superb, the options available to spec out any of their Poweredge servers is extensive and with educational discounts you get a lot of performance for your money. No doubt a lot of people are loyal to RM but price/performance wise i doubt they've got a clear advantage plus with a huge global community of hp and dell users if there's a problem your 3 year dell or hp support can't fix you can bet there's someone out there who will. There's a good reason the big four....hp, dell, ibm and Sun have such significant share in the x86 server space and it's not all marketing hype.

BTW watch out for Sun to make further inroads with their new intel line of servers - in terms of engineering Sun's opteron package was seriously on a par with ibm's offerings - and they have and continue to sell very well particularly as web and app server front ends to Sun's sparc IV+ behemoths.

[localzuk]

I would go with HP as well. Excellent, reliable, fast and relatively cheap compared with some brands. Why buy RM?

[russdev]

Dell do have good servers as said to you before lots of dell CC3 servers out there.

Russell

[m25man]

According to Gartner,
HP/Compaq now outsell Dell in the Server market globally.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...e-beating.html

RM & Viglen all use the Intel Server Chassis because Intel are not permitted to manufacture the complete item themselves due to Monopoly legislation that applies in most countries, so they distribute the components and chassis through the IPP channel.

This means that there is a reasonable amount of profit to be made out of assembly and distribution and RM, Viglen and several others can all put their own badge on them.

They are very generic and the biggest problem with them is that many of the components are simply thrown together without any real thought as to how a specific controller works with a specific mobo or drive with array.

Specific server builders such as Dell and HP spend a lot of time and money making things work together correctly.

I have a couple of 2 x HP Quad Cores running with only 4GB of Ram and they fly, but that was only because they were on a buy 1 get a second CPU free deal in July.
You should see how quick it logs on!
They make a superb platform for Virtualisation though and thats what it will eventually be used for!

[nicholab]

I think RM might be a bit upset if you virtualize you CC3 servers thought you could migrate then to new hardware that way. Any way my NM likes RM so that what we will be getting but I did try and say people use dell server with CC3 and he would not hear of it.

[Butuz]

but I did try and say people use dell server with CC3 and he would not hear of it.

Yeh I used a Dell server as our Forest root when I had CC3 put in - RM were not too chuffed

Mind you when the dell server comitted suicide and took our network down - I bought a pair of RM servers

Butuz

[torledo]

According to Gartner,
HP/Compaq now outsell Dell in the Server market globally.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...e-beating.html

RM & Viglen all use the Intel Server Chassis because Intel are not permitted to manufacture the complete item themselves due to Monopoly legislation that applies in most countries, so they distribute the components and chassis through the IPP channel.

This means that there is a reasonable amount of profit to be made out of assembly and distribution and RM, Viglen and several others can all put their own badge on them.

They are very generic and the biggest problem with them is that many of the components are simply thrown together without any real thought as to how a specific controller works with a specific mobo or drive with array.

Specific server builders such as Dell and HP spend a lot of time and money making things work together correctly.

I have a couple of 2 x HP Quad Cores running with only 4GB of Ram and they fly, but that was only because they were on a buy 1 get a second CPU free deal in July.
You should see how quick it logs on!
They make a superb platform for Virtualisation though and thats what it will eventually be used for!

I was under the impression both HP and IBM have always outsold dell globally...

Anyway, both dell and hp dual/quad core boxes are ideal for virtualization (either vmware or xen). The support and testing with virtualization technologies and other technologies such as clustering and enterprise linux by dell/hp is extensive. I doubt you can say the same for RM or Viglen although I'm sure you can get it all to work with a bit of extra work because as someone has mentioned most of the server builders OEM intel components anyway - although ibm tend to plough a slightly different furrow(sp?) The combination of RHEL on hp proliant DL360 G5's just can't be beat for most workloads.

The point about components is another good argument. Dell's PERC Raid controllers are superb - and with clustering you don't need a big 5U server to apply advanced redudancy of your storage and components. Plus if you're really brave a small SAN will really let you scale.

Also, what hasn't been mentioned is the management tools that come with dell/hp. Openmanage has been around for years and does a reasonable good job. HP's RDP are great tools as is their system insight products.

I know a lot of schools seem to have bought into the CC3 and other similar technologies - most of these products seem to be merely gui front-ends to active directory to shield you from the complexity and automate some processes. But in all honesty AD isn't terribly complex and surely vbscripts and now powershell enable you to be productive and automate processes for tedious tasks offering great flexibility. Schools should think of themselves more as small enteprises only then can they embrace what's offered by Microsoft, Dell, Redhat, HP etc on the server/infrastructure side and leave niche 'school solutions providers' *ahem* RM. The perceived 'value' offered by the likes of RM and viglen is a false economy. Although I doubt even RM could beat the price i got for our Dell PE2950 with SAS drives and commvault galaxy express dammit!!! for their equivalent product.

[bossman]

I don't think RM is false economy. As for not being flexible, 3 RM servers 2 DCs one member, one mail server linux, proxy server IPCop, two fileservers linux, terminal server 2003r2, 2 NAS boxes linux, FTP server linux oh and one KS3 ICT server 2003r2. All are fully integrated within the network.
Infrastructure 1GB fibre
300+ workstations
40 IWB promethean
40 High end network printers
11 Cisco 48 3560 switches
5 cisco aironet WAP
etc Total cost approx £250.000

I may have missed a couple of bits as this is TOMH.

This is in contrast to the RC school across the road who have spent almost 4.5 million on 4 networks over 5 years.

[torledo]

I don't think RM is false economy. As for not being flexible, 3 RM servers 2 DCs one member, one mail server linux, proxy server IPCop, two fileservers linux, terminal server 2003r2, 2 NAS boxes linux, FTP server linux oh and one KS3 ICT server 2003r2. All are fully integrated within the network.
Infrastructure 1GB fibre
300+ workstations
40 IWB promethean
40 High end network printers
11 Cisco 48 3560 switches
5 cisco aironet WAP
etc Total cost approx £250.000

I may have missed a couple of bits as this is TOMH.

This is in contrast to the RC school across the road who have spent almost 4.5 million on 4 networks over 5 years.

I don't doubt there are numerous schools/IT managers who are happy with their RM kit and that, like yourselves, they are utilizing it to meet the needs of their user base. I think you'll find that the reason the school across the road has gone through so much cash is because they were sold the wrong solutons - or didn't do sufficient evaluation or planning in the products they eventually went with, the usual schoolboy errors.
They didn't piss through 4.5 million because they didn't go with RM and I bet there are plenty of RM horror stories, particularly at authority level. But I take your points onboard and obviously the negative RM installations are counterbalanced by success stories like yourselves.

I think that the school should have used that little known adage....'nobody ever got sacked for buying cisco' (yes i know i've replaced ibm with cisco but it's true). Then again maybe they bought the wrong cisco gear or failed to negotiate a cost effective upgrade. All i can say is if i had even a tenth of that budget over that period I'd make damn sure they bought atleast two catalyst 6509's....plus a couple of 4 socket proliant's and a HDS array....plus i'd dread to think what experiments they tried with thin clients, servers and pc's.....they might even have tried FTTD...that and fiber cards in each PC would have blown a serious wad...LOL.

BTW what is 'TOMH'

[nicholab]

Bang goes the argument schools don't have enough money for enterprise kit!!