Who Is The Best Vender For Rackmount Unix Systems?

briansp asks: "What hardware vendors are people most happy with for rackmount Linux servers? We've looked at IBM, Dell, VA Linux, and others, as well as putting stuff together from parts. Important evaluation points for me are: price, quality, reliability, support, and quick turnaround on orders. Anyone have any vendors they've been particularly happy or unhappy with?"

I like VA linux

[The Madpostal Worker]

We have like 6 Fullon 2x2s and they are nice machines, if not a little expensive. They are very reliable(we have one with 170 days of uptime), but on nice components(the 440GX+ chipset, with a 2930 SCSI controller, intel EEpro 10/100 nics (3 of them) and Quatum Atlas 10k drives), and have these pretty blue lights on the front. A bit expensive, but it usually makes the PHBs happy to get a big name for hardware(they think it means better support, bah!)

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*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
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I Like IBM

[InitZero]

We've got over 30 IBM Netfinity servers (3500, 3500M20, 5000, 5600, 8500, etc.) all of them bought in the last couple years. I'm a big fan of them.

Most of these servers replaced Compaq products. We've ran into problems with Compaq taking too long to deliver product and poor quality control.

The IBMs are fast and well built. There were some problems early on with Microsoft NT clustering not supporting SSA drives but that was resolved. (IBM and Microsoft worked together to get it fixed within three months. Not bad considering the players.)

I've got a mostly stock RedHat 6.2 install running on a 3500 and a really warped version of Debian running on a 5000. Our IBM hardware tech is well versed in Linux and has giving me a good feeling about IBM's support of Linux.

I may be biased, however. I've been working with IBM's RS/6000 products for many years and generally like IBM.

InitZero

Telenet

[wozz]

Telenet Systems, who was just bought out by BSDi makes fairly nice systems. We use them for firewalls and intrusion detection systems. They even have a quad xeon system now which I'm evaluating for some database work. Check them out at www.tesys.com [tesys.com] and hardware.bsdi.com [bsdi.com]

rolling your own

[po_boy]

I'm not advocating it, but if you're interested in building your own, here is an article on How to Build Your Own 1U Rack Mount Server and Save a Bundle [linuxtoday.com] from an old slashdot article. It may prove to be a useful resource.

Rack systems

[jmdavis]

We have a variety of VA Linux, Cobalt, Dell, and custom rack boxes.
In general the VA Linux machines are great. documentation and quality control have suffered somewhat in their fast expansion, but they are still my first choice for linux boxen. We have several of the 4u units and three fullon (2u) servers.
The cobalts are OK for generic web/ftp servers, but they are lacking as full featured servers.
Dell has some great machines (including 2u rack units with dual pci busses). They are more pricey than VA Linux and the machines arrive with enough security holes to fly the Enterprise through.
The custom boxes that we have are in the form of a turnkey 32p beowulf. They are 4u cases that are basically the same as the older VA cases. The systems work great and were secure and ready to roll when they arrived (they were mounted in the racks had the net cables cut and bundled. Once the network was connected and the power plugged in, it was ready to run. These came from Paralogic. (www.plogic.com).

Sears Roebuck

[Woodrow Stool]

Craftsman is the best hardware brand, ask anyone.

Check Out LinuxSolve

[GeekBird]

LinuxSolve [linuxsolve.com] makes rackmount linux boxes for business & ISP/ASP apps. They take security seriously, and I believe they have a customized install. Check out their "configure your box" type interface. (No, I don't work for them.)

Build your own.

[booch]

If you are competent enough to build your own system, and you have the time, it may be cheaper to build one yourself. Don't forget to factor in your labor costs though. Obviously, you'll have labor costs either way, installing a new server. But when buying from parts, you've got to spend time picking out individual pieces and ordering them from different places. Then you get to make them all work together. ;)

I just ordered my own system. I got a motherboard with an Intel 815E chipset, which comes with built-in video, sound, and sometimes even 10/100 Ethernet. All I had to buy was motherboard, CPU, RAM, HD, floppy, CD-ROM, and case.

I got a great deal on a rackmount case. Only $150 + $30 shipping at TechStore [techstore.com]. It's got 3 5.25" and 2 3.5" external bays plus 1 internal 3.5" bay. Most places want to charge you at least $300 for a rackmount case. This case is really quite nice too. I got most of my other components from Transcend PC [transcendpc.com].

VA Linux for price, components

[nellardo]

In my own comparison shopping, VA Linux seems to have the best prices for a given configuration. They seem to beat Penguin Computing by maybe $100 (and often for a slightly better config at that price). They're always several hundred ahead of the "big boys" like Dell and Compaq (even without the $1000 "WinNT tax"). Generally, they seem to have the best configurations available earliest, too.

The Fullon 2x2's are solid, stable, and well-built. Easy to set up, too. Turn it on, give it a root password, tell it where to find the gateway and DNS and what its own IP is (or tell it about a DHCP server) and it's running. Takes five minutes - more time to get the thing out of the box.

I'm also quite fond of the 1U high Network Engines boxes - VA has recently started reselling those. You can stack them 40 per rack.

Anyway, IMNSHO, YMMV, etc.

Re:Sears Roebuck

[human bean]

Craftsman. Yeah, sure. Here's twenty-five cents, go buy yourself a real tool set.

You can have my MAC tools after you pry them from my dead, bloody fingers.

VA Problems

[Bingo Foo]

Don't choose based on purchase price alone. Keep in mind that you WILL need service for these systems, unlike most desktops. Go with a company that values you as a customer enought to provide you with real service, even if your order is small by today's dotcom startup standards.

We recently bought a 36 processor system from VA, and we get treated like they're doing us a favor by allowing such a small order.

We haven't bought a rackmount system from SGI, but we have bought Origins from them in the past, and their level of service is excellent. They even use the same mobos as VA, IIRC.

No, I do not work for VA, or SGI, or any hardware manufacturer/reseller/blah blah blah.

Bingo Foo

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Alpha Rackmounts

[gammatron]

Compaq has an excellent line of rackmount Alphaservers, from the 1U single EV6 DS10L, up to the massive 4-CPU ES40. All of them run both Tru64 Unix and Linux (as well as VMS). The DS10 is fairly cheap and extremely reliable.

OT: why isn't this story on the front page?
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I use Cubix

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out www.cubix.com You can put up to 8 servers in 7U of space. It's built like a battleship, has triple redundant power supplies, SNMP monitor, built-in KVM, and other cool stuff. Cubix has been around for almost 20 years and I have found it easy to do business with them.

www.dnuk.com

[Clansman]

Try www.dnuk.com [dnuk.com] if yer in the UK. Nice solid boxes, we have one running zope etc flawlessly.

Re:VA Problems

[tolldog]

Um... they use more than the mobo... they have VA build the systems, IIRC... look at sample pics of the SGI web servers and the Fullons... They are exactly the same, minus a few exterior decorations.

Another VA fan.

[tolldog]

I come from a long standing SGI shop. We have had SGI's since day one... and we have always bought SGI boxes. Because we are in the 3D computer animation industry, this is not a big supprise.
We have a few rouge NT boxes, Intergraph and SGI, in the studio.

After buying all of this hardware and dealing with many companies on hardware support for various other hardware needs (tape backup, raid fileservers, routers, switches...) we know what we need and are willing to pay a premium for uptime (did I mention that we are H.A. We must keep the studio up.)

With this being said, we went looking for a render farm, willing to spend a decent amount of money. We looked at an SGI only solution, but the cost for high end graphics workstations to just render on seemed did not make sense. We thought about an NT solution about as long as it took you to read this sentence.

Linux was our natural choice. I started talking to different companies, all of them having rack mounted x86 boxes. Only a few came with Linux.

Because we are H.A., we needed not only a hardware solution, but a supported hardware/software combo. We were looking at 40+ machines now, a couple hundred in the future... more than what a person really wants to be responsible for.

This brought our choices down to a few companies. Of the companies, VA seemed to be the best deal, price or not. They had the support. They had the know how. They *were* Linux (ok... maybe an over statement).

After talking to VA, the local VA reps and all the people needed in presales meetings, we decided that VA would be everything that we needed. The price/performance/support ratio was in there favor.

When talking to VA, they gave us a list of other large 3D houses that were using VA as a rendering solution and set up phone conferences for us to talk to those that were running the systems currently. Only a company with a good product would act that boldly.

I have had few system problems with my machines. Those that I did have were dealt with on a high priority basis. When the network card drivers and the switches did not play nice, I recieved a phone call from somebody who knew what was going on... not some tech support jockey. We were able to get a working solution in a short period of time.

We had software that was supposed to work on our version of RH (6.2) that VA has slightly modified. Do to some problems, VA was willing to work with the software vendor to diagnos, debug and fix the problem.

After all is said and done, VA is well worth the price, regardless if it is a little higher than building it yourself or buying from an x86 vendor that ships with blank HD's or Win pre-installed.

They allowed us to implement a brand new renderfarm solution into an ongoing project with little downtime and hardship on our part. Now the company is banking on those boxes performing because our load of rendering is constantly increasing with multiple projects going on.