Re: [cobalt-users] Re: cobalt-users digest, Vol 1 #279 - 20 msgs

[Kris Dahl <kris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 2/7/00 10:08 AM, Hawke Robinson at hawke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> They don't provide the CD with the qube, it's an additional $99 charge tohave
> one shipped. Not
> that price is an issue when we were losing thousands of dollars a minute. But
> that's moot now
> since we've removed the Qubes from our environment. And I will ban any use of
> them anywhere
> related to our company, or any  of our clients or partners in the future.
> I supposed that wuold certainly be possible, but we still (have too) would
> have to pull out
> the hard drive to recover the perl code we had on there.
> I was hoping that someone has designed some sort of feature (intelligently)
> that would allow a
> more reasonable recovery method.
> We're instead going to stick with our HP and Sun equipment, companies that
> seem to have
> actually thought out these issues.
> I understand the RAQs have console ports and the like, that would have been
> much more
> sensible, but eventhat aside, the fact they (cobalt) don't provide 24 hr
> support is certainly
> enought to keep our company from ever using their products in the future.
> Such a shame though, a well.

One of HP's selling points, if you are familiar with their products is
reliability and availibility.

I am a certified HP AdvanceNet, and authorized on pretty much all of the
current Netservers from the Single processor entry-level E60 up to the the
LXr 8000 (8 processor enterprise server).  Frankly, I am an expert on the
products both technically and from a pre-sales standpoint.

The reason why you go with a HP Netserver (lets take the LH3 for example) is
obvious.  On a LH3, I can get the following: Rundant power supplies,
redundant fans, redundant raid controllers, multiple global hot-spares,
striped RAID, ECC scrubbing memory, etc..  That means it can survive a
failure of: multiple multiple power supply failures, fans, RAID controllers,
numerous hard drives, single bit (and double bit) memory errors.  Lets say
that for some reason it has a triple bit memory error, or the NOS crashes.
It'll reboot itself after automitically when it detects a hang.  And lets
say that some data got corrupted--I can dial into the thing remotely and
reinstall the OS, if need be (would be tricky, but theoretically possible).
The thing's a rock.

The Qube offers no availability options.  If you're application would cost
you thousands of dollars a minute, and you haven't addressed this issue, I
wouldn't be worried to much about your clients and partners.  I'd be worried
about your IS staff and the priorities they place on the bottom line.

The above mentioned Qube is about $1500.  The above mentioned LH3 is
probably around $20,000.  That is the difference between a mission critical
enterprise server and a Cobalt server appliance.  It isn't that Cobalt
hasn't thought about these issues--its that the decided not to build the
product.  They chose to build a very affordable, very capable server
appliance.

-k