RE: [unclassified] RE: RHEL 5 on a Dell PowerEdge 600SC

Gaddis, Jeremy L. <> wrote on Monday, June 25, 2007 12:05 PM:

Sorin Srbu wrote:
<grin> I agree, but what if you want to build your own
monster-workstation with high-end components? None of the
brand-names in the industry (Dell, HP whatever) are that
well-known for providing really fast stuff. So I'm left with
building my own machine(s). Granted, I found some usable
hcl-lists on linuxquestions.org but that doesn't feel that
official, just some geek's word for it, that it will work. Know what I
mean? 8-]

How do you guys do it? Only brandnames in the server-room and on
the desks?

That's how we do it. I work at a .edu so we get decent pricing on both
servers and workstations. With the servers, sticking with what we
already have means we're already familiar with the hardware and we know
that it works. For workstations, sticking to the same hardware "family"
means we don't have to build new images for new hardware. It's
extremely nice to be able to only install the OS and applications once,
make an image of it, and deploy that out to hundreds or thousands of
workstations. Having similar hardware means we also have spare parts
on-hand in the event of a hardware failure. In addition, we have great
support from our vendors which comes in handy at times.

Years ago, I had the "build it myself so I know what it's in it, plus I
can do it cheaper" mentality for my own machines, but I don't even do
that anymore. It's to the point where just about any machine I buy will
support Linux (keep in mind I don't play games, do any high-end graphics
work, etc.) and the price of PCs has came down so much it's not really
that economical to build it yourself anymore. I don't even have a
custom-built box at home anymore -- they're all machines purchased
direct from the likes of HP or Dell (though I've added larger HDDs and
more RAM to all of them).

My newest workstation, an HP xw4400 (Core 2 Duo, SATA HDDs, DVD-RW,
nVIDIA, etc.), has no problem running XP, Vista, Ubuntu, Fedora or RHEL
out of the box. We've really came a long way (with regards to Linux
hardware support) in the last several years, thanks in part to companies
like Red Hat.

Well, that's really the gotcha' over here. We mainly use the RHEL-machines to
do molecular modelling and calculations related to the modelling. That's why
they need to be really fast and preferrably have a high-end (nvidia) gfx-card.

Our windows-park is a bit more heterogenous, but lately I've begun buying 2-3
year old Fujitsu and Dell SFF-machines with the same basic hardware layout, as
the desktop park is really old and needs to be upgraded over the next year.
The Linux-machines are a bit more complicated, but will still last longer. 8-]

Thx for your reply. I think I have all I need for now!


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