[ARCHIVED THREAD] - WHITE-BOX HELL!!! (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 4/17/2006 4:51:19 PM EDT
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I just took a job as Sys-Admin for a small start-up with about 35 people globally, the main location (where the NOC is) here in Austin has the worst hodge-podge of home-made gamer PC's I've ever seen. I would love to have the ass removed from the person that told the CEO it was a good idea to go white-box, you can actually get more for less w/Dell & HP, and have seemless supprt, asset tracking, not too mention A F*CKING WARRANTY!!!! I have concluded in my 1st week, that anyone who thinks it's a good idea to run a shop on white-boxes is an idiot. Somebody please kill me...  |
i beg to differ. all i build are white box machines. you don't know what your are talking about  Dells are disposable. motherboard goes bad 1 day out of warranty you have to buy a new machine white box machines are always expandable and upgradeable. any components goes bad in a white box machine replace it with a similar part and your back up and running. with at most a fresh install of windows due to a change in chipsets, at worse. sure dells come with extra software. ANY technician who's family member buys a cheap system because he or she can't build of for them quick enough. the first thing that tech does if format that HD and do a fresh install of windows without all the "extra" software. you must be foreign and enjoy talking to oversees for tech support. I don't know about anyone else the only reason i call tech support is because i am charging $99 dollars an hour to do so. as for me, i will build my own computers and all my family and loved ones, as long as i have the time. no warranty what's wrong with you people  |
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a white box computer will always be more expensive than a big store brand computer. big stores buy in bulk so they get it cheaper....... they use better parts, which typically give you longer warranty. like i said they will also be more expandable than any other system. |
Can anyone tell me where the real IT threads are in here? I somehow attracted kids who think I don’t like home-built machines for gaming… no, no, that’s not what I am talking about!!! I’m talking about having an enterprise environment, w/no standardized hardware… I can’t image machines; I can’t call for 4 hour parts, no knowledge base articles to peruse, etc. You can't imagine being a systems administrator w/two dozen servers, all home-built... and if you think that someone is going to pay you $75K+/year to sit around and play want-t-be tech w/those types of machines, instead of helping them achieve their mission, you really need to get a dose of reality. Again, @ the house; I’ve got a totally slick home-built running dual AMD’s that has 2gig’s of low-latency RAM, w/10K SATA raid, because I liked the performance for the price. However, if this thing crashes, I don’t loose money, or loose my job because the wife wants a report as to why this happened. |
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White-box systems are NOT servers, nor are desktop systems. Sure, they all run x-86 operating systems, but they're not the same! It's like arguing that a Porsche does the same thing as a truck because they both run on petrolium products. Start replacing them with servers - I recommend the Newisys 4-socket or their 2-socket system. They're very solid, with an impressive management subsystem (IPMI compliant). Sun, HP and IBM also offer AMD-based servers (yes, I am biased towards AMD systems). |
Still a piss-poor choice compared to Dell's w/a 4 hour warranty. And, when I say white box, I am not talking about desktops, 4 of these machines have dual opteron's w/8-gigs of RAM and a terabyte of storage. It's next to impossible to support a home-built in an enterprise environment. I have 2 with two failed powersupplies and spent an hour on the phone, and then 2 hours driving around to get a replacement. That time could have been better spent overseeing other responsibilities after a ticket had been looged w/a major vendor and parts en-route. I could probably hire someone for $35K to more than adequately support my hardware, but the RIO is better spent on hardware w/an SLA and, most importantly, a WARRANTY! |
im done with this thread. you need to reword your original thread, before you start calling people kids 
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This is sort of an odd debate. It depends on your environment, your user size, and your vendors. Do you use off the shelf apps/databases or is it custom/semi-custom or vendor supplied and maintained or some variation of all of the above. In my environment it would be absolutely foolish (not to mention a waste of time and money) to build computers. If I had 35 users and off the shelf software it might make a lot more sense. ETA: My days as a field engineer/technician are long gone. I'm an IT "suit" now. My opinions on matters like this tend to be mitigated by that. |
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There is no debate, I can list 25 reasons why you want to standardize, and not one reason to go white-box. I too worked for Dell, as a server hardware escalations L2, and then as a technical account manager. White boxes actually cost more in the long run, and if children dont understand that... then I'll have to tip my hat in agreement w/ Ron White, "You can't fix stupid!" |
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I used to build networks of the size you are supporting now, with white boxes. At one time I thought it was a good idea. I now work at a very large corp with 100K+ systems and there is no way to white box the place. Some people just can't think large scale, and understand the complex nature of large enterprise environments. And some tend to go the other way. Relax, your point is taken, but it wasn't the idea that was bad for the site you are at, it was the execution. Didn't you scope out the network before accepting the job? I always get an idea of what I am getting myself into..... Have fun! |
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You're right, and normally I would have walked away. However, I just got laid-off at Sony a month ago, just after purchasing a new home. I needed a gig, and FAST... this place may be the death of me, I just hope I can un-screw the previous 3 guys work over the past 2 years, all of which used this as a stepping stone to move onto something else, making this a test-lab, whathaveyou. I do, however, stand firmly that ANYONE who thinks it's ok to deploy whiteboxes in a commercial endeavor, is a class-act ID10T form filler-outer. I am recomending leased notebooks w/ADP warranties, that have spares on-site, and Dell/HP servers w/5-year warranties and 4hr SLA's moving forward. |
Just think of the resume plug you can have if you are able to convince upper management with a well laid out plan on how to standardize and upgrade....and they give the nod. 
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Sometimes it is difficult to get the configuration required from a standard manufacturer. When I spec out a light workstation for computational physics, there are simple things like ECC memory that I must have, but which Dell's motherboards won't support full function of unless I upgrade to a much more expensive machine. Or, I can buy the components that meet the required specifications and build a "white box" computer for about 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of the Dell equivalent, and rely on the warranties for the individual components. I usually start here and upgrade at least the disk and graphics. Jim ETA: I understand that you're talking servers and not relatively low volume desktop pcs/workstations, which is a much different environment... |
You still miss an obvious point, SUPPORT!!! I can't call (say newegg.com for example) and have them send me a proc, dims, sys-board, power supply, and video card to trouble shoot w/, then send back what I replaced the next day, or 4 hours even w/an SLA. I buy $499 desktops w/15" LCD's and a 3 year warranty! I stand FIRMLY that anyone who thinks white-boxes have ANY place in business is a total shit-for-brains moron fucking idiot bitch bastard that deserves to have his kidneys cut out with a dull wooden spoon. I do NOT need to spend 3 hours trying to figure out why an install is failing; just to find out that the BIOS of one motherboard allows for 'plug-n-play' OS, while the next does not. I do NOT need to spend an hour trying to ghost an image of one machine, when there are 10 more different! I do NOT need to waste 45 minuets trying to prove that I have a lic to an OS when all I need to do is call the OEM/VAR integrator (insert Dell, IBM, HP here) w/my service tag. N’fact; this thread is really starting to make my ass hurt!!! I mean it, really, I have long considered this to be a good forum; but more and more frequently I read a dip-shit 'nuh-uh... uh-huh... nuh-uh... uh-huh marathons' by a bunch of guys claiming to be ex-navy seals regarding knife-fighting. Even worse, you can go into an airplanes thread here; and the same losers will say there were F4 pilots in Nam! |
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I think what Glockandroll is trying to say is there is a difference between “cost” and “price”. I must agree. Standardization and an established support structure is the only “cost” effective way to run an enterprise. However his diplomacy reminds me of the SNL computer guy skit. ETA; I nominate White Box vs. Tier 1 Manufacture for the official Urban Commando equivalent to the 9mm vs. 45 debate. |
Wow, First you call people that disagree with you, kids. It sure looks to me like you're throwing a world-class temper tantrum yourself.  Now, back to the subject. I agree with you on Whitebox servers. But, there could be reasons they went that way too. 1) They don't know what they are doing. 2) We all get those flyers advertising the best server in the world for $999. Some higher up could have possibly made the decision for them, or possibly funds were limited (they are a start-up company, you said it yourself, they could have been trying to cut corners). I'd guess #1 happened, but you never know. We have all HP Servers. Their support isn't all it's cracked up to be either. I work for a school district with 3000 kids, and 1200 computers. Not as large as some, but mission critical is still mission critical. I had an HP server die on a Friday afternoon. We have 12 hour support, not 4. The Mboard fried in the server. I was told a rep would call me first thing Monday morning with the part, and he would come install it. (Since we had 12 hour onsite support). I think "cool, half a day down Monday, it could be alot worse, we still have all of our data" Well, Monday comes and goes, no phone call. I call HP again, they say they will take care of it. Tuesday comes, no phone call. Finally at 3:00 PM Tuesday afternoon, I call a different vendor, and have them order me the new part. They have it here the next day. I put it in. Drive back to my office, only to have a message that the other vendor (that HP called) was wondering if he could come over the next day to put that part in. 12 hour on-site turned into 6 fucking day support???? So just because it says 4 hours, doesn't actually mean it's going to be. Now, as for whitebox machines for end users. I fully support those. I know of 2 companies in Fargo ND that currently have 5 year and 7 year next day warranties on all their parts. (3 year on monitors, because they don't manufacture them) And on top of that, they give you a backup supply of all the parts. Their warranty is better than any big name company, and we pay less. And if I have to call them for support, I talk to a REAL AMERICAN. I hate calling Micro$oft, Dell, (the HP guy was British) etc... |
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White box for end-users!!! Have you guys seen the $350 Dell w/19" LCD... you can upgrade to XP pro and 2 year warranty for under $500 bucks? Don’t use your example of a fried sys-board from one of the big-three as a way to argue a point that is moot. 'Mission Critical' should mean you have a fault-tolerant solution in place, and a spare sitting in the RACK waiting to take it's place, shame on you if you don’t. Fuck diplomacy, I'm asking for someone to end my agonizing pain. The only thing that would make me feel better at this point is to very badly injure the douche-bag that talked my CEO into going white box. I have parts bins full of mis-matched shit that would make one of you Navy seal/F4 pilots cream your shorts, but what good does it do me? The owner has deep pockets, and someone who worked for him knew that and had a partner who owned a PC rip-off store. They got his ear half a decade ago, there is no convincing him, just like there is no convincing anyone who supports white-boxes for anyone other than gamers, IE CHILDREN! I am brining a pair of 1U Zeon Dell's on-line now and moving the exchange store over to a fault-tolerant active-passive cluster w/SCSI shared storage, and will have a 3rd just sitting there, in case one of my clusters goes down. I am lucky that the guy who made the decision to buy an iSCSI DAS unit coughed up the dough to buy one scalable to a true SAN and will soon have a 2003 R2 server running it. I’ll eat a dead skunk's ass on camera and post the video here if one of you Seals/F4 pilots can make an argument for going white-box that I can't tap you out on 5 different ways on each point. Take a look at this and tell me white box makes sense for end-users!!! www.clearcube.com/view/flash/Interface_v2.htm And, assuming that you don’t have a real fault-tolerant (high-available) solution, learn how to negotiate a true enterprise SLA. |
I understand what G&R is trying to say, and typical of a lot of good techs, his people skilz are, shall we say, in need of a little polishing.  That comparison to the SNL skit cracks me up, I have all of them somewhere, "MOVE!"  As to KS_Phy, in your case and for similar systems I have encountered, I have gone white box, and will continue on a case by case basis. but by far, when you have a number of machines that need to be supported, it is best to go with a vendor that can supply 100,000 copies of the same thing. You can deploy one image to all the systems and make minor application changes. All your drivers will remain pretty much the same, and parts inventory just became easy to maintain. It is also easier to maintain lifecycle on all the systems, and if they are all the same, there is less of the petty BS that so and so has a bigger/better/faster than I...... G&R, relax buddy, it is ok man. I feel your pain, I hve worked at places where it took me 2+ years to straighten things out, only to get laid off when it was. But this is what we live for, if there wasn't something that needed to be fixed, we would be bored and become dangerous  dave |
I work for a large company with 1400 centers. I agree with what you are saying. It is a must to have standardization. Having said that, even with big vedors like IBM and Dell, our company had heck of time convincing the vendors on importance on standardization. We had Dell 4500 GX150s coming in about 5 years ago. Eventhough they were all GX150s we had two different CD-ROMs. Dell didn't have enough parts so they subsituted with another. Sure enough, our base image woudn't work on many of them. Similar thing happened with IBM 330 servers we had. I think it was different modem. It was dropping credit transactions. |
Well, I can see very clearly that you know nothing of the Educational system. I would like to know how many school districts can afford these fault-tolerant procedures. Is the school board going to give me the money to purchase them if we did have the money? No. Shame on the School Board, not me. And as for arguing a point that is moot? Apparently, when you said
You were really trying to further your own argument with a 'moot' point. Because what I did when I typed this.
Was to show you that Guarantees and warranties aren't always what they claim they are. Moot point. You say you want 4 hour gaurantee. I say I had 12 hour, and it turned into 6 days. How is that moot? Reading Comprehension........try it! |
I've played with clearcubes and kinda like them. But if you're going thin at the desktop why not go thin all the way. Come upgrade time you're talking about removing and replacing one CPU per user. Why not go full thin clients back to the server. Sun has a special going on where you can get a SunRay 2 for 249. |
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Relax Dude. Children, Kidneys with dull spoons etc.?  If there is no debate, then why are you still debating it in this thread lol. Get your boxes wherever you want and be happy. Don't have an Internet pissing contest about it! I'm separated by a Plexiglass window and security door from equipment that's all my responsibility, not a white box amongst them. The file server for me and my small but remarkable staff is a little white box about 3 feet from my left leg. It has been up for just over 4 years and never failed in any way, shape, or form (Linux and older but super stable hardware being the reason). Wish I could say the same about the Dell and IBM Enterprise Blades and rackmount servers.  |
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LOL....That's funny, because you're way past an idiot in my eyes. I'm the idiot, but you said
Nice. Well, if I'm the idiot, how come you can't even master the English Language. By the way, it's L-O-S-E, not L-O-O-S-E. You know, Ron White was right.
 Never in my life have I seen somebody piss and moan so much about their job. To be honest, I'm not sure you're cut out for the Technology field. I would hate to see how bad you get worked up if something actually did break. But, if I'm an 'idiot' for showing you an example of when a 'guaranteed' warranty doesn't pan out, then suggesting you could use some work on your reading comprehention, then I guess I'm an idiot. But are you sure you're not looking in the mirror? Lets see. I'm the idiot, but you post on here voicing your displeasure about whiteboxes. That's fine. Then someone questions you, or doesn't agree with you, and you immediately jump on this F4/Vietnam pilot kick. I guess idiot wouldn't be the word I would pick, but that's just me. It's funny that you jumped on the first posters to your thread so fast. But, I guess they don't have any clue, because you're the only real expert in here, aren't you. I mean shit, you probably helped Al Gore invent the internet too. I would hate to see what would happen if your wife (If by some God-forsaken reason you're married) wanted to bake Chocolate chip cookies, and you wanted M&M cookies. If she would dare question your superiority you would call her a
You said you just got that job after being laid off at Sony....correct? You said you needed a gig FAST......correct? Then I have some advice for you. 1) Shut your fucking mouth.... -and- 2) Do your fucking job...... If you hate your job that much, maybe you should quit, then you wouldn't have to worry about how bad you got it and
Wow. Now I await another one of your insightful comments, since we're all that much smarter from reading your posts. |
Hey moron, you have any idea what a 'honeypot' is? 
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Do I know what a honey pot is? LOL. I guess we skipped that chapter in all of my Network Security classes in college. Of course I know what a honeypot is. What's your point? Are you still trying to flex your "I'm the god of everything computers. I am all-knowing, and all-powerful" muscle? If you are, it's not going to work. But if you want to play this "My dad can beat up your dad" game, I'm all for it. Althouth it will probably have to wait until Monday. I've got a life, and plans this weekend. |
No, I'm just pointing out that 'looser' is my way of smoking out charlton's in message forums who rest high and mighty on the laurels of their victories by forfeit whereas a "Gosh I'm smart!" defense caused so much pain in their victims that they decided to save themselves by retreating to prevent what you have from further spreading. Go away little gamer boy... please just go away. |
See if this helps you out... As a non-kid (27 years of IT), I can tell you from first hand experience that Dell ain't all that great. Their systems ARE disposable, and poorly built. They are middle-of-the-road systems at best. The IBM X-series systems are hands down better machine than anything Dell is putting out. As for building a white-box server and deploying it? Probably not as a server, but they are perfect for end-user desktops. If they die, you just plop another down in its place. Why would you worry about Dell arrival time when you can just drop a new pizza box on someone's desk in 15 minutes and fix it later? You need to spend time with infrastructure architects (like me) instead of windoze sysadmins, then you might have 1/2 a chance of understanding the big picture of system integrity and business continuation. By the way, until you can fully admin your system without the GUI, you ain't jack.
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Go away little gamer boy. That is all you got. Wow. To be honest, I'm fairly disappointed in you GlockandRoll. For how 'know it all' you sound, you sure gave up easily. Back to the old routine of "Well, Curt1521 whooped my ass and put me in my place, so I'll just start calling him names to make me feel better" And I'm sure you intentionally spelled L-O-S-E wrong twice in a row. You backtrack fast enough, you should probably try out as a D-back in the NFL.
LOL Dizza, I can't imagine why he would be either. |
I vented about white boxes and now I deserve to be laid off from Sony? Sony is laying of 10000 people by FY07, and most of the decisions were based SOLEY on salary!!! I'll wager that I make between 2 and 3 times what you earn annually, and will tell you from experience when you are high in the $$$ earnings, you are also high on the lay-off radar. Seriously, you need to get a grip. I'd love to be the 'gripper' if you catch my drift. I can't wait for the day that you send me a resume falsifying what you know, when you really spent all your time sniffing the buts of antagonists who get pissed off when I point out that a 4HR SLA is a legall binding agreement and there is NO excuse for not having a high-available, fault tolerant solution in a mission critical environment. Tell me when it's ok to go white box, or go soak your head... because this thread is starting to suck MAJOR ASS!!! |
Have you read my posts jack-hole, I'm making your point for you... Dell commoditized the server market, and I can have hot-spares on standbuy for less than a 3rd the price of IBM's. Yeah, IBM is great, but for what, why is Dell # 1 in domestic servers right now? I was sys-admin at Ford (an IBM shop) and then an engineer for Dell, so tell me what you think you know. Tell me, if you dont mind, what is your experience? Am I correct for assuming you got into IT after the teams or naval flight school? |
My experience? 3 IT degrees, including a masters. 27 years of OJT from programmer to O/S engineer to DB engineer to hardware design to architecture. Why is Dell #1? Hype & advertising. Same reason M$ sells more than *nix. *nix systems are faster, more stable, and have a better ROI than M$, but M$ kiddies believe the hype because of all the pretty GUI junk. Again, if you can't admin the box from the command line, start flipping burgers. And as for price of spares, the COTS hardware in a white box is usually better than the junk Dell slides in, so I can have a white pizza box on standby cheaper than your Dell solution. So tell me how that messes with your TCO? |
Dude, seriously, there's no reason to be bitter about the fact that Microsoft, and Dell won... or if you choose to be no need to take it out on me. I've been listening to guys like you for 20 years saying the same thing, and I bought Dell and Microsoft stock. You know your Schmitt, no doubts here... but your argument is that I don’t, and should flip burgers? How sow, Microsoft and Dell ARE the enterprise right now, so don’t get all high and mighty on me when I’ve been doing this for a while myself and have tested SCO, Solaris, AIX, HP-UNIX, AS-400, RedHat, and Microsoft servers head-to-head in labs at Ford, Sony, and Dell. My point; you can say one thing, but I’ve been there… and done that. You may not like to hear this, but I can tell you that your argument is that of a 1911 enthusiast trying to intimidate a Glock shooter next to him at the range w/a $2000 piece of Baer garbage, and then getting out-shot by the guy w/the $500 Glock. |
Bitter, no. More like curious. Like why do today's kids think M$ really works? And as for saying M$ & Dell won? HA! I'm replacing 1,000s of M$ servers (mostly Dell) with IBM P-series systems and moving poor performing SQL server to Oracle/Unix. *nix works, and works better. QED. |
Yes, but I disagree with your opinion on IBM vs Dell. They're both crap, but I'll take Dell's crap over IBM's crap. I've been burned too many times by Big Blue Balls. We do just fine running *NIX on Dell, Sun, HP. Same thing at my last job, too. |
We have over 200 Dells deployed and have very few problems. With our corporate contract and warranty, it is usually time to upgrade before any serious problems happen. The IBM options were a pile more money. I don't recall ever seeing a mother board cook off, but I have seen a couple of hard drives fail. When you figure in the software, it makes zero sense to even dream about going white box. I have set up a dozen or so Dell home systems and have had zero hardware failures in the past 3 years. 1 flat panel monitor was bad when we got it and the laser printer had a bad tray. When you go through the small business ordering, you can get killer deals with great warrantys. It is pretty hard to build a box with operating system and other software for the same price. |
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I by far prefer Supermicro servers to anything I have used from dell. Since they come bare bones you might consider them white box. Dells are great throw away desktops for the average user. Not so good for high end simulation, test and measurement workstations. For that white boxes are usually best. Both have a place in the enterprise. The same with the tired old my M$ is better then your *nix. A homogenous enterprise is just asking for trouble. Both have their strengths and weaknesses and their place in the enterprise. An ideal robust enterprise will provide essential services from both OSs. |
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I guess I should clarify my stance. I'm referring to servers sitting in a data center. I don't give a hoot what sits on somebody's desk. For a farm of rackmount 1U boxes, I like Dell. Their desktops ain't too great. That might be part of the disagreement here. ETA: I worked at Dell for a year and I absolutely DESPISE that company, but I have always liked their hardware for cheap servers when you need them on a large scale (ie, don't have the resources to build your own. Try building 5-10k white box servers. It's tiring.) There's also the accountability issue to factor in. It's valuable to the pointy-haired folks. |
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FWIW.....My 2 cents. My first comp was a "custom built latest and greatest game machine" built by my "computer expert" friend which lasted about a year and crashed hard. After learning how much it would cost to replace the processor and motherboard, I decided to go cheap and bought an eMachines package deal for $299 after rebates at BestBuy. Thing works like a champ, plus I got the warranty and the software to go with it, unlike my white-box special. It had a power supply go bad once, but tech support diagnosed it over the phone and sent me a new one overnight. No problems since. Hell, I liked it so well I bought another one for my kid. I'm on the original one now, in fact. It's probably going on 4 years old now, so I feel I've gotten my money's worth if it crashed right now. And if it did, I'd go back to BestBuy when they're on sale again and get the cheapest emachines they have. |
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If you are buying servers in bulk I understand why Dell/IBM/etc is the right way to go. I am an infrastructure guy. The servers I work with are used for domain services or small SQL servers. Even on a large LAN we are talking less than 20. For my personal systems I will only use my own builds, not because they are better just because I am picky. I only use ASUS and Supermicro main boards. (Anyone who autoroutes the traces on a mother board should be shot.) The trick to building good systems cheap is buying the slowest CPU for the fastest FSB you can get. hen |
For my personal boxes, I absolutely build them myself. But for a data center with thousands and thousands (> 10k sometimes) systems, it's just that much better to buy something like Dell or HP. Plus, when you're talking those numbers, you get a sizable discount that makes it a lot more tempting to go that route. People who slam these products for being overpriced have probably not bought them in real quantity, because they are in fact a lot cheaper than anything you can put together yourself. |
