[geeks] IBM rant

[Bryan Fullerton]

On 11/29/06, Dan Duncan <dand at pcisys.net> wrote:
> So why exactly is it that when I call for replacement of a failed
> drive on an IBM-manufactured server to replace an IBM-labelled
> drive (although it's manufactured by Fujitsu) when I give them the
> machine type and long-ass IBM model number reported by the drive
> they don't know the actual type of replacement drive because they
> need some made-up FRU that's only printed on the front of the
> drive carrier instead of being somehow accessible from the system
> itself?

IBM x86 servers are ass. I'm supporting ~60 low-end IBM x86 servers at
$WORK, mostly running RHEL. We seem to be using IBM because one of our
execs has a good relationship with them from previous experience which
was all AIX/POWER - sigh.

Don't get me started about HostRAID. Or IBM's lights out management
card that uses a PCI slot, even in 1U boxes. Or that our execs want us
to try to get Solaris 10 x86 running on these machines.

Bryan