[Beowulf] RAID storage: Vendor vs. parts

[Alvin Oga]

hi ya josip

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Josip Loncaric wrote:

> My experience with boxed drives bought from retailers was better than 
> OEM bare drives from reputable sources.  Retail boxed drives often carry 
> 3yr warranty, so there is more at stake for the manufacturer if they go bad.

warranty is the same from retailers or wholesalers

"reputable sournces" that i'm talking about are the ones where
you are required to have reseller permit to buy from them
and some do not have a website for consumer to buy

the big question is does one call ibm or the place you bought it from
to return the item 

to me, the parts should NEVER fail withing its warranty period
	- exceptions are doa when its first powered one
	which has < 1% failure

	- exception was the ibm deathstar disks 
	( that resulted in a class action suit against ibm )

	we don't have any problems with our hardware ... other than
	deathstars and we buy 1,000's of um

> P.S.  You would not want to build a cluster that way (limited selection 
> & higher prices) but for spare parts, retail stores are quick and 
> convenient.

yup .. which is why want to buy cots parts .... and nothing specific
to the system integrator that sells their modified versions
which has been the case where all services/support calls came from
to go fix these "modified/customized" systems

when a part dies, you want to go to the local pc store, and buy
the $10 item or $100 replacement disk and have people working in
a  matter of hour or three hrs .. etc ..

c ya
alvin