[geeks] OH YEAH

[Peter L. Wargo]

On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Bjorn Ramqvist wrote:

> "Peter L. Wargo" wrote:
> > 
> > Having said that, I hate *&$%(&^@!! SGI, as many of you well know.  They
> > caused me all sorts of grief in a previous job, and their shoddy support
> > and poor planning make me want to spew lung butter all over the room.
> 
> Please share you experience. Atleast I'm interested... :-)

A few years back (1996), I went to work for the National Center for Genome
Resources.  Against the better advice of the SA there at the time, the
idiots running the show decided to get into bed with SGI and replace the
SS1000 database server with a Challenge XL.  "We'll get 10x performance,
easy!"

Wrong-o.  After a year of intense tuning by SGI, the best we ever saw was
1.5x for our 1/2-million or so.  PLUS, it went down quicker than Linda
Lovelace.  Once, it failed for a WEEK due to the inept people at SGII
sending out a patch that was REQUIRED to keep our contract, but had the
nifty side effect of rewriting our /etc/system file and bringing to light
a nasty Sybase/IRIX bug that would hard-hang the system.

Most of their service people were inept and surly (some were good, but
they were shadowed by the twits) - like the one who kicked the power cord
out of the wall for the Challenge XL.

(Small aside to note that Sun is not immune from hiring idiots - like the
Sun PS individual who, while working on the E10K install, turned off the
A/C in the data center because it was too cold for her.)

The final straw was the sales droid from SGI who, in the middle of all
this, told me he was "disappointed" in me for not buying more
workstations.  I told him that when their fucking POS server worked, we'd
talk about it.  He seemed offended....

Overall, every time I've dealt with SGI it's been a pain.  Other companies
have pulled gaffes with me, but SGI just manages to fuck up every time.

-Pete