[geeks] Dell T105 server arrives

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Apr 1, 2008, at 17:16 , Mark wrote:

> On 1 Apr 2008, at 19:22, Shannon Hendrix wrote:
>> DVD drive is bare bones ROM.  Excellent DVD superdrives are $25,  
>> quantity one, so I think Dell should offer that as an option.
>
> How many people burn DVDs in a Server. Seriously?

Everyone who needs backups and can't afford the extremely high cost of  
tape... :)

> That's... erm... to stop people.. switching it off? I sure as hell  
> wouldn't want a hard power switch stuck out of  the back of our  
> server. Certain folks would take it as a quick reboot switch.

Sun, SGI, HP, Cray, or IBM servers, mainframes, and supercomputers...  
they all have hard power switches.

All of my Sun, DEC, and SGI systems have hard switches, and it has  
never caused a problem.

Not sure what you are getting at here.

They are usually on the back or otherwise hidden, so it is rarely a  
problem.

Where it was a problem in the past was when hard power, software  
power, and reset were all unprotected switches on the front, and easy  
to press.

>> My initial impression is that Solaris is very slow to install, but  
>> then it always is.  Sun really needs to rethink their installer,  
>> because it makes a horrible first impression of system drive I/O  
>> speed.
>
> Yes, and seeing as the Project Indiana betas (OpenSolaris) install  
> in a fraction of the time and in a nice GNOME/Xorg installer, I  
> think a facelift is required somewhere.

I don't care about a facelift, I just want it to be faster.

In fact, I hate Gnome so rather not depend on that.

As long as they keep the GUI as just a front-end, not a problem.

> *shrugs* Maybe they supply a driver?

No, they don't.

I had to download an old Solaris 8 driver.

It works, with some errors and bitching due to packaging and  
permissions changes, but it will be nice to see an updated driver.


-- 
Shannon Hendrix
shannon at widomaker.com