Re: [cobalt-users] CHEAPEST RAQ3i - where to buy?

[Kris Dahl <krislists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 5/3/00 10:08 AM, abc-123.net at abc-123@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> To each his own, I know the people, and i know how their support is, as
> being cheaper does not convey poor quality, they have the same quality
> hardware as Dell, Compaq, IBM and the other big guys, bought from the same
> place.

I agree that the stuff may be the same actually quality, but I also am aware
of how it works in this industry.  I disagree and have found that being
cheaper *always* means an overall inferior product.  The stuff costs
everybody the same within a few dollars.  If it is cheaper, it means that
they are either a) competing on a lower margin, probably risking the long
term success of the company, which is risking the support options of the
customer or b) they are not going to be able to provide a high level of
support.  I have never found deviation from this rule in all of my past
experience.  Sure the product is cost effective, but if they company won't
be around in 2 years, was it worth saving the extra $500?

Perhaps they have VC out the wazoo and have surplus support people now.
What happens when the cutthroat pricing ends up making the product too
popular?  You run into the growth problems that have plagued Cobalt lately.

I've got a mantra: "There can only be one least cost provider, and I never
want to be it."  I may append to that: "And I don't want to do business with
someone who is."

> Now for Cobalt servers, we have over 50 of them, since day 1 of cobalt, and
> we have had a failure rate of systems that is very unacceptable. Backups are
> virtually impossible, restoring a dead Raq2 takes days to restore, while the
> IOpliance one takes less than 2 hours if you have the backup tape. If you
> have the raid system, then there is no fear of hard drive crashes.

A Raq with SCSI and a tape drive would offer identical backup and recovery
times.  That's comparing apples to oranges.

But if you have a mission critical situation, with 200 paying clients, I
honestly can't even fathom using a server that can't survive a single disk
failure.  Doesn't even have to be hotswap--just has to stay up long enough
to get a new drive, down the system, replace the drive, reboot, remirror.

In my book, the Iopliance isn't a solution any more than the Raq is for that
type of situation.  If you end up being down because you haven't engineered
a satisfactory disaster recovery system--that's no one's fault but your own.

-k