Dell Succumbs to Vendor Lock-in
| posted on 2/19/10 by Ben Beuchler
I really like Dell servers. They're well-engineered and sold at an unbeatable price point. Custom-configured servers ship within a week of the order. I don't cringe before calling their support line. And perhaps most important, their hardware is based on industry standards, so if I need a CPU, RAM, or HD in a hurry I can run down the street to General Nanosystems and pick something up.
Until now.
On page 9 of the manual for their new line of RAID controllers, halfway down the "New Features" list is this little gem:
- Blocking of non Dell certified drives being used with PERC H700 or PERC H800
This means that if you buy a server (with RAID) and attempt to install a new drive purchased from someone else, it won't work. They have stopped selling servers that use SATA drives or SAS drives and switched to Dell drives.
Dell's response to the hew and cry of angry sysadmins:
http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2010-February/041335.html
The thread begins here:
http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2010-February/041274.html
My favorite comment:
http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2010-February/041340.html
About Ben
For the last decade Ben's worked as a network administrator, and here at Clockwork he manages our office network and a farm of around 30 servers. Ben spent 7 years as a full-time paramedic and messed around with computers as a hobby. Now it’s the opposite. When life gets too stressful, he climbs into an ambulance for a shift.
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