Re: Off-list Re: Alternatives to Dell?

Josh Berkus wrote:
> Jeff,
> 
> 
>>I'm curious about the problem's you're seeing with Dell servers since
>>we're about to buy some 750s, 2850s and 1850s.
> 
> 
> The problems I've been dealing with have been on the *650s.   They're the ones 
> you name.
> 
> 
>>FYI ... the 750s, 1850s and 2850s use Intel chipsets (E7520 on 1850s
>>and 2850s, 7210 on 750s), Intel NICs, and come only with LSI Logic
>>RAID controllers.  It looks like Dell has dropped the
>>Broadcom/ServerWorks and Adaptec junk.
> 
> 
> I don't know if Vivek is on this list; I think he just had a critical failure 
> with one of the new Dells with LSI.
> 

On this note about "Adaptec junk", I have a question regarding hardware 
as well. We tend to build a lot of servers in house (Supermicro based 
with the Zero-channel raid). Does anyone have any anecdotal or empirical 
data on using a ZCR card versus a full-blown RAID controller (adaptec or 
other)?? I am trying to build a medium-duty database server with 8G RAM, 
4x144GB U320 Scsi RAID 10, FreeBSD (5.3-stable or 4-stable) and was 
wondering about performance differences between ZCR and Adaptec versus 
other manufacturers' Full-RAID cards. (PCI-E)

Sven