something i’ve mailed my dell sales-rep…
I’d like to express my concerns about Dell strategy of shipping broken raid controllers [ H700 / H800 ] with 11th gen PowerEdge servers.
By this I mean blocking non-dell hard drives as described here and in couple other places listed at the end of this post.
I understand that it is still possible to order PERC6 with newer servers, but something tells me that those sooner or later will be phased out.
I have not added any new hard drives so far to 30+ dell servers that I take care of, neither I plan to do any upgrades, yet I like the feeling that I’m running machines that comply to industry standards and allow easy upgrade without relying on a single vendor. It seems that now Dell wants to take a path of DECs, IBMs and Suns of the previous era.
It’s obvious for me that you cannot provide support for components not tested with your hardware – but warning customer is one thing, denying her/him to use 3rd party components – something completely else.
I doubt that voice of tiny clients like us can change anything but yet I’d like it to be heard.
Some more reference:
http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2010/02/dell-removes-3rd-party-drive-support/
http://blog.drgn.net/2010/02/dell-ships-broken-enterprise-perc-raid.html
http://serverfault.com/questions/111588/server-vendor-that-allows-3rd-party-disks
http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2010-February/thread.html#41274
best regards,
PS..
20100409 – i just got mail from dell:
DELL H-SERIES CONTROLLER BLOCKING OF 3RD PARTY DRIVES TO BE REMOVED IN Q2FY11
Dell will no longer prevent customer use of non-Dell hard drives attached to PERC H700 and H800 controllers on our 11th generation of PowerEdge servers. A Q2FY11 PERC Firmware Update is planned to allow non-Dell hard drives to be used with these controllers.
which is cool….
more here.