Hardware cost

[nicholab]

What do people think of the cost of this hardware? £3,933.36

 

Intel Rackserver case

2x Xeon 5050 (3.0GHz)

4GB RAM

Wk3 Server OS

DVD-rom

AIT3 tape drive

Space for 6 hot swap drives

Redundant power supply 700W

integrated SAS controller

2x 73GB 15,000rpm

LSI 20160 controller

3x 147GB 15,000rpm

Raid 1+5

Dual integrated 1Gbit NIC

1 Year Next day on Site warranty

[Ric_]

I would be expecting a a PROPER brand for that money - HP, Sun, IBM.

 

Get your friendly account manager to get bid pricing.

[Guest Guest]

I cant remember the full spec but we just got this from dell for around £2200 ex vat

 

2 x quadcore xeon

4gb ram

4x 147gb 15000rpm scsi (space for 8 )

4x 1gb nic

raid 5

redundant psu

 

If you want the full spec give us a pm and ill dig it out.

[Norphy]

I would say that that's a bit steep but to be honest, that's effing vertical m8!

 

Dell sell the Poweredge 2950 with a similar spec (No tape drive admittedly) for £2729. That comes with a three year warranty and room for six 3.5" or eight 2.5" hard drives and is otherwise specced identically to what you've quoted up there.

 

You can get an LTO2 external tape drive for less than £700. More capacity and cheaper media than AIT3 too.

 

I'd avoid the Xeon 5050, it's based on the obsolete and not very good Netburst technology. The 5110 is the same price and will perform similarly, the 5120 and 5130 aren't significantly more expensive but are much better.

 

Assuming you're a school, I'd also avoid buying the OS with the server as you will be able to get Windows Server on a Select or Open agreement for significantly less than the cost of the OEM Windows Server that comes with that thing. That applies to every vendor btw, always buy servers with no OS

[webman]

It looks like an RM price 8)

[localzuk]

I'd be looking for a branded machine also. A 1 year warranty on a server is a bit weak to say the least. Servers are expected to fulfill their roles for between 3 and 5 years normally.

 

I'd personally go for a HP DL380 G5 with the same size and speed hard discs as you mention, with 4GB ram, redundant PSU's, and a couple of 5130 CPU's + a tape drive. Should come out a little less expensive than yours and you'd have a 3 year NBD warranty too.

[nicholab]

Yes it is an RM quote. How do you do get the Select or Open agreement when RM are doing the forest root migration?

 

j17sparky why did you only go with 4 drive rather than Raid 1+5 configuration?

 

If you go with the different hardware you miss out on the full quality of RM support.

 

I am trying to persuade my NM we can save money and get better hardware. He also thinks my suggestion of RM doing the install on other hardware is a shoddy solution. I know there is no point saving money in schools as some one less just wastes it.

[john]

I would never get a server with less than 3 year warranty

[nicholab]

On the others we pay yearly on going support and a couple are at the end but they are still in warranty. So we would be making another saving there as well. I suppose the best way is to replace you Main server ever 3 years and reuse the old ones.

 

We should also be able to do the SIMS server are selves as well as the back up system. But RM can do it for lots of money. I Which RM would become a software and service company and give up with Hardware.

 

PS

HP DL380 G5 are what I dream of

[shefflad]

Sorry, did I read that right....

 

'If you go with the different hardware you miss out on the full quality of RM support.'

 

Didn't you contradict yourself in that sentence.

[russdev]

Yes it is an RM quote. How do you do get the Select or Open agreement when RM are doing the forest root migration?

 

j17sparky why did you only go with 4 drive rather than Raid 1+5 configuration?

 

If you go with the different hardware you miss out on the full quality of RM support.

 

I am trying to persuade my NM we can save money and get better hardware. He also thinks my suggestion of RM doing the install on other hardware is a shoddy solution. I know there is no point saving money in schools as some one less just wastes it.

 

Why does he think a shoddy solution?

 

As said before the situation has gone to far and need to get some independent advice from someone like LEA. As at moment you are to biased against he is to biased for.

 

 

Russ

[localzuk]

Don't you have to get 3 quotes in your LEA anyway? I know Somerset CC would for something of that sort of cost.

[nicholab]

How would you get three quotes for some thing like this? It an RM system it comes from RM. So the only thing you could get quotes for is the Hardware. Can we get advice form the LEA even if we are outside of there system also the NM is biased toward the LEA being rubbish.

 

The NM thinks it is shoddy because you save some money and there could be a hardware vs software argument with support contract.

[GrumbleDook]

get a quote from Dell and a quote from PC World, then price up the costs of RM installing and configuring it as a CC3 server.

 

That is how you get comparable quotes for a network running middle ware. Treat the middleware as a seperate entity to the hardware.

[Ric_]

I know a lot of people love Dell and think they are wonderful but I've never felt that their gear is really built to the same standard as HP and Sun. No harm getting a quote anyway.

 

AFAIK RM are now priding themselves on allowing you to use your own hardware. Just get your regular friendly supplier to give you a few options and get your Select pricing from Ramesys for the server OS, etc.

[Geoff]

I know a lot of people love Dell and think they are wonderful but I've never felt that their gear is really built to the same standard as HP and Sun. No harm getting a quote anyway.

 

Meh, just get a 3 year warranty on the box (about 100 quid last time I checked) and forget about it. If it breaks it's Dells problem.

[Ric_]

@Geoff: I prefer things not to break in the first place.

 

All very well having a three year warranty but if you're without a server for a day people really start to get annoying!

[Geoff]

But then I don't get to test my redundancy and resiliency provisioning.

I stopped buying just one server for things when I stopped working in primary schools.

[Butuz]

Meh, just get a 3 year warranty on the box (about 100 quid last time I checked) and forget about it. If it breaks it's Dells problem.

 

No - if it breaks It's your problem 8O I'd prefer that not to happen.

 

You can use any branded server hardware you like in an RM CC3 network. Dell, HP, Intel, whatever. They will charge you an extra comissioning fee to comission non RM servers though so factor that into your costings. What RM are not keen on is random no name untested build it yourself type servers - and I agree with them about that one!

 

I started off with Dell server on my CC3 network but that server's now failed 4 years on and overall I was not impressed with Dell's support - they seem very "distanced" for want of a beter word and the account manager didnt seem to really be bothered much about speaking to me.

 

I have gone back to RM servers with 5 year warrantys, fat clients with 3 year warrantys and thin clients with 5 year warrantys for piece of mind and i've negotiated discounts to make offerings comparible with Dell's kit. I've still got a 10 year old RM P233 server that works fine and a couple of RM P100 workstations that have only had a bios battery change 6 years in - amusingly amazing reliability!

 

If your dealing with RM hardware you have to be proactive in negotiating discounts with your account manager otherwise you will pay through the nose.

 

Andrew

[Geoff]

Like I said, I'm not amazingly bothered if one of my Dells dies. I have four of them plus a Fujitsu as Citrix Terminal servers. So it just means cramming people onto four servers instead of five.

[broc]

It does not matter which supplier you buy a server from, they all fail eventually. Building your whole strategy on one brand that for historical reasons has been reliable does not guarantee that the next box you buy will be as reliable. You need a plan to cope with failure, and you have to consider building in redundancy into your configuration.

 

The problem with schools is the funding seldom goes far enough to afford the luxury of truly fault tolerant networking.

 

Having DELL servers (or any other mainstream supplier) with a next business day warranty for repair may be enough for some schools, or you can have 4 hour cover if you believe the server is more critical, or you can carry spares onsite, or you can have fault tolerant clustering technology, you pays your money & takes your choice.

 

In a previous job, I worked on a DR project for a large clearing bank. We implemented a fault tolerant mainframe configuration with automated fail-over to a second site 100 miles away, if I recall correctly it cost around £25m.