I'm a fairly experienced RH and Fedora user and admin looking to try CentOS for the first time. I have lots of experience with Dell servers and I'd like to stick with them. Although I'm sure it's not always strictly enforced, Dell claims that it won't provide warranty hardware support on servers installed with an un-Dell-supported OS (basically, anything other Windows, RH, and Suse). Are other CentOS admins successful in getting Dell to support their hardware? How does it work--do you just tell them it's RH? Also, any recommendations for which Dell PERC or Dell SATA RAID adapters can I expect to work nicely with CentOS? If, on the other hand, Dell gives you trouble for CentOS installs, and you have recommendations for other server vendors, let me know. In particular, one that can provide on-site warranty support in Toronto, Canada, would be great. I'm only interested in i386 architecture, by the way. Thanks! --Matt
On Sun, 2005-12-04 at 15:47 -0500, Matt Morgan wrote:> I'm a fairly experienced RH and Fedora user and admin looking to try > CentOS for the first time. I have lots of experience with Dell servers > and I'd like to stick with them. > > Although I'm sure it's not always strictly enforced, Dell claims that > it won't provide warranty hardware support on servers installed with > an un-Dell-supported OS (basically, anything other Windows, RH, and > Suse). Are other CentOS admins successful in getting Dell to support > their hardware? How does it work--do you just tell them it's RH? > > Also, any recommendations for which Dell PERC or Dell SATA RAID > adapters can I expect to work nicely with CentOS? > > If, on the other hand, Dell gives you trouble for CentOS installs, and > you have recommendations for other server vendors, let me know. In > particular, one that can provide on-site warranty support in Toronto, > Canada, would be great. I'm only interested in i386 architecture, by > the way.---- Dell is going to warranty the hardware - it doesn't have anything to do with which OS you are using. You can't expect them to support an OS that they don't support but I would bet that if the software issue is something that wouldn't change from RHEL/CentOS - they wouldn't miss a beat. BTW - most of the PowerEdge stuff now can run the 86-64 as well as the i386 Craig
On Sun, 2005-12-04 at 15:47 -0500, Matt Morgan wrote:> Also, any recommendations for which Dell PERC or Dell SATA RAID > adapters can I expect to work nicely with CentOS?If RHEL supports them, CentOS will support them.> If, on the other hand, Dell gives you trouble for CentOS installs, and > you have recommendations for other server vendors, let me know. In > particular, one that can provide on-site warranty support in Toronto, > Canada, would be great.Most Tier-1 OEMs don't want to support anything but a combined hardware/software solution. With that said, many Tier-2 and whitebox OEMs cater to multiple OSes. Several system integrators lurk on the Red Hat AMD64 list: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/amd64-list I also mentioned decade-old ASL recently as shipping CentOS as an additional option to Fedora Core and RHEL: http://www.aslab.com> I'm only interested in i386 architecture, by the way.Since Dell doesn't ship AMD on its servers, it makes little difference. Although I wouldn't put more than 1-2GiB RAM in the servers. If you need more than 2GiB, I'd be looking towards AMD. -- Bryan J. Smith mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ------------------------------------------ Some things (or athletes) money can't buy. For everything else there's "ManningCard."
Matt Morgan wrote:> I'm a fairly experienced RH and Fedora user and admin looking to try > CentOS for the first time. I have lots of experience with Dell servers > and I'd like to stick with them.Ok, though there are some other OEM and tier-* folks who might be able to get you good hardware.> Although I'm sure it's not always strictly enforced, Dell claims that > it won't provide warranty hardware support on servers installed with > an un-Dell-supported OS (basically, anything other Windows, RH, and > Suse).Yup. Thats the way they play. We have to be able to support anything our customers run on, so we have quite a few OSes going. We run our main servers on Centos, and our test/development stuff has a rather interesting multiboot environment.> Are other CentOS admins successful in getting Dell to support > their hardware? How does it work--do you just tell them it's RH?You might not like this, but you start looking outside Dell for hardware or hardware support.> Also, any recommendations for which Dell PERC or Dell SATA RAID > adapters can I expect to work nicely with CentOS?Well, I can tell you which SATA RAID works well in our experience under Centos, and what is a big stinking pile of bits. Our list isn't comprehensive (rather short). Whether or not Dell supports either of them is another story. If you want to stick with Dell, you effectively negate any choices you may have for doing things in a non-Dell way. This is the case with most of the large vendors. That means, Dell approved stuff throughout the system. HP used to do this with their laptops. As soon as you plugged in a non-HP PCMCIA card, you could kiss support goodbye. This has more to do with how Dell and others want to drive the cost of support (comes right off their bottom line) down by minimizing variables, as compared to what actually will or will not work, and working to support their customers doing things outside the "norm" or in this case, outside the Dell way. Not that there is anything wrong with Dell, just that they have to make choices about which business they are in and how they are going to go to market with support. If you don't like their choices, you can complain to them, or vote with your wallet. If you stick with them, and you want support, you need to follow their rules.> If, on the other hand, Dell gives you trouble for CentOS installs, and > you have recommendations for other server vendors, let me know. In > particular, one that can provide on-site warranty support in Toronto, > Canada, would be great. I'm only interested in i386 architecture, by > the way.If you include AMD64/x86_64 in that group, have a good look at the Sun machines (v20z, x4100, x2100). Their support is pretty good. We use their gear for some of the clusters we build for customers who need high levels of hardware support, or short downtimes in the event of a failure. -- Joe Landman Scalable Informatics LLC, email: landman at scalableinformatics.com web : http://www.scalableinformatics.com
We run CentOS on our Dell kit (servers, workstations, desktops, even some laptops) and haven't had any problems with warranty support from them for hardware issues. I would never call them about software support, which we don't pay for. If I were running RHEL more widely (I do have one install on a server), I suspect that Dell would push me toward calling Red Hat directly anyway. Dell has decent Linux support for various distros. Officially, they only support RHEL (and theoretically SuSE), but there's community support available for most other reasonably popular distros (notably Debian). Dell's Linux Community Website, <http://linux.dell.com/>, has pointers to various resources. If you want to run anything other than RHEL, you can get support from the various mailing lists (especially linux-poweredge and linux-precision). I know that people have gotten Dell's OpenManage (OMSA) stuff running on other distros. I've also had no problems with Dell's DKMS and OMSA packages on CentOS (CentOS is, after all, supposed to be almost identical to RHEL). I recently did a bunch of BIOS upgrades from the Linux command line with Dell's packages (sans OMSA) and they worked well, too. Also, the x86_64 CentOS code seems to run fine on our Dell Precision Workstations with EM64T processors. The issues there are the same you'd see running on any other AMD64 hardware -- some packages aren't built for 64-bit systems; some may not be buildable. I can't speak for any great advantages to using the 64-bit code; most of the work that's being done on those machines Claire -- *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Claire Connelly cmc at math.hmc.edu Systems Administrator (909) 621-8754 Department of Mathematics Harvey Mudd College *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 188 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20051206/e559ff9d/attachment-0002.sig>
On 12/6/05, C.M. Connelly <cmc at math.hmc.edu> wrote:> > We run CentOS on our Dell kit (servers, workstations, desktops, > even some laptops) and haven't had any problems with warranty > support from them for hardware issues. > > I would never call them about software support, which we don't pay > for. If I were running RHEL more widely (I do have one install on > a server), I suspect that Dell would push me toward calling Red > Hat directly anyway. > > Dell has decent Linux support for various distros. Officially, > they only support RHEL (and theoretically SuSE), but there's > community support available for most other reasonably popular > distros (notably Debian). > > Dell's Linux Community Website, <http://linux.dell.com/>, has > pointers to various resources. If you want to run anything other > than RHEL, you can get support from the various mailing lists > (especially linux-poweredge and linux-precision). > > I know that people have gotten Dell's OpenManage (OMSA) stuff > running on other distros. I've also had no problems with Dell's > DKMS and OMSA packages on CentOS (CentOS is, after all, supposed > to be almost identical to RHEL). I recently did a bunch of BIOS > upgrades from the Linux command line with Dell's packages (sans > OMSA) and they worked well, too. > > Also, the x86_64 CentOS code seems to run fine on our Dell > Precision Workstations with EM64T processors. The issues there > are the same you'd see running on any other AMD64 hardware -- some > packages aren't built for 64-bit systems; some may not be > buildable. I can't speak for any great advantages to using the > 64-bit code; most of the work that's being done on those machines > > ClaireThanks again to everyone for the helpful responses. Claire--thanks for those links.