On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 13:54, Jeff Crosby <jlcrosby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
with Power i equipment. ÂThe amount of trouble people like you and Lukas and
Pete had and are having getting new machines set up and running gives me the
willies. ÂI want simplicity, not this new complexity being introduced.
Well, i can't talk about Pete's experiences, but i'm deploying roughly
20-40 machines per year, and the issues i have usually affect 10-20%
of these. I don't see a higher or lower rate of problems with our
System x servers, and this is how it has always been, as far as i
remember. If IT was simple, all our customers would do everything by
themselves and i'd be out of a job ;)
If you get a good BP do this for you, you can be up and running in an
hour - well, maybe a bit more if you install all the licensed programs
needed and cum+group PTFs.
Aaraon's issues stemmed mostly from the fact that he used his normal
work laptop to configure this, which made everything more difficult
due to extensive security software installed on his laptop. This is
why we always sell the machine with a console - the customer's IT
won't have to worry about providing a machine, and i can rest secure
that i always have properly working console. We use Lenovo SFF
machines for this, and they're roughly 1000$ with a nice 22" screen.
IBM's documentation regarding this process is, IMHO, hilariously bad.
And i think the whole ops console idea is plain stupid - i don't get
why IBM can't add a VGA port to the small Power 520 models, add
support for USB keyboards and one could get everything up an running
just by plugging a keyboard and a screen into their Power 520.
But then again, these servers _are_ complex beasts. I agree that IBMs
documentation could be better for all the folks that don't deploy 40
servers per year and have gotten used to the various oddities one
encounters, but i suspect the low end market just doesn't earn them
enough cash to justify this expense.
midrange.com
