The Sun Blade Blog
Would IBM "Dare To Compare" blade offerings more accurately? #4
"Dare to Compare" blade offerings Part 4 - the follow on to IBM's published competitive analysis of its
BladeCenter offerings versus blade products from HP, Dell, and Sun. We'd like to again make things clearer for another claim
where IBM is wrong about Sun Blades.
IBM FUD: IBM's Light Path
Diagnostics help expedite repairs and minimize
downtime by quickly and clearly identifying those components that need
maintenance. Just push a button and the battery will light up the
problem. Sun has no comparable technology."
Sun Truth:
Sun
has comparable technology to diagnose, monitor and report system and
component status, via LED indicators, on all FRU's; which provides
the ability to quickly identify the FRU's that need maintenance. Status
of the system and components can be viewed via the Chassis Monitoring Module and the individual FRU indicators. Sun
Blade capability also includes a 'Fault remind button' that
helps service personnel identify bad DIMM's and CPU's.
Posted at 11:22AM Mar 17, 2008 by Douglas Wilson in Sun | Comments[12]
and all hardware errors are reported back via the operating system - even if you are running Linux?
Posted by May The Source Be With You on March 24, 2008 at 01:55 PM PDT #
In my expericence you will need all the hardware monitoring you can get with Sun equipment. CPU, memory, PSU, PCI fail at high rates - you certainly would not want to run a business on it.
In comprison, IBM equipment is bullet proof.
Posted by Investa Ixnotsun on March 24, 2008 at 01:58 PM PDT #
Hello 'May The Source be With You', thank you for your question about hardware errors being reported back to the Linux OS. In conjunction with the operating system capabilities, Sun Blade uses the Integrated Light Out Manager (ILOM) technology in the blade servers and chassis to monitor status and diagnose failed components to facilitate rapid correction of failing components. With Solaris 10 this capability is enhanced through the Predictive Self Healing and the Fault Management Architecture technology. For Linux environments, these capabilities are enhanced with Hardware Error Report and Decode (HERD) technology. HERD also uses the local IPMI interface to report to the Service Processor (SP).
HERD attempts to provide as much information as possible from the data supplied by the Service Processor. In particular, physical addresses obtained from correctable ECC memory errors are matched to the corresponding CPU module and DIMM number.
More information can be found in the ILOM 2.0 User Guide at http://docs.sun.com/source/820-1188-11/index.html
Posted by Doug Wilson on March 25, 2008 at 03:16 PM PDT #
Hello Investa Ixnotsun, sorry to hear that you are not happy with Sun Blade equipment. Your experience is not typical of Sun users. Can you please explain in details the information to back up your complaints? Maybe a Sun representative can assist you, and help you implement business critical solutions on Sun equipment (as 1000's of customers have done). I have noticed on a few other Sun Blog pages that you have also had other disagreements in regards to Sun products. Is there something that can be done to help you have a satisfactory experience with Sun products?
Posted by Doug Wilson on March 25, 2008 at 03:41 PM PDT #
It is not Sun Blade equipment I am not happy with - it is other equipment - from V120 to 25K and lots in between. Nearly all of our SF6800 servers have had most of their 6 PSUs replaced. System boards are replaced too often on SF6900, SF12K, and SF15K. Memory fails, I/O boats need replacing, HBA cards fail etc etc. It is all second rate hardware which wastes so much sys admin time.
In 18 years with many hundreds of IBM UNIX servers, I have *never* had to change a CPU, just one or two memory cards and the odd PSU. One can't begin to compare the reliability.
Posted by Investa Ixnotsun on April 02, 2008 at 02:43 PM PDT #
My experience is the opposite of Investa I's. IBM's disaster disks (fiberstar and deskstar) more known as "deathstar" was proactivelly by SUN in our datacenter but IBM didn't even admit there was problem with them. I did cost us a lot when we started loosing data.
Posted by Bergamo on April 23, 2008 at 01:11 AM PDT #
I tested this camera for a client. I didn’t have the light running for more than 15 minutes. The battery lasted approximately 6 hours before recharging. The
LCD, however, had a few dead pixels - never saw this before. Tried returning for exchange and had to put up quite a fight. Anyone else seen this?
http://www.batteryfast.co.uk
Posted by ibm battery on May 01, 2008 at 06:31 PM PDT #
Basically IBM isn´t bulletproof because it just never works good, the disks technology, expensive costs and lack of binary compatibility are the headlines of the whole IBM "Corporate policy"
Posted by Logic on May 05, 2008 at 08:08 AM PDT #
I tested this camera for a client. I didn’t have the light running for more than 15 minutes. The battery lasted approximately 6 hours before recharging. The LCD, however, had a few dead pixels - never saw this before. Tried returning for exchange and had to put up quite a fight. Anyone else seen this? http://www.batterylaptoppower.com
Posted by ibm battery on May 15, 2008 at 06:44 PM PDT #
I tested this camera for a client. I didn’t have the light running for more than 15 minutes. The battery lasted approximately 6 hours before recharging. The LCD, however, had a few dead pixels - never saw this before. Tried returning for exchange and had to put up quite a fight. Anyone else seen this? http://www.batterylaptoppower.com
Posted by ibm battery on May 15, 2008 at 07:12 PM PDT #
I tested this camera for a client. I didn’t have the light running for more than 15 minutes. The battery lasted approximately 6 hours before recharging. The LCD, however, had a few dead pixels - never saw this before. Tried returning for exchange and had to put up quite a fight. Anyone else seen this? http://www.batterylaptoppower.com
Posted by ibm battery on May 15, 2008 at 07:16 PM PDT #
hai
Posted by 64.136.3.254 on June 16, 2008 at 09:42 PM PDT #