[Beowulf] Re: Third-party drives not permitted on new Dell servers?

[stephen mulcahy]

Kilian CAVALOTTI wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 9:06 AM, Rahul Nabar <rpnabar at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 1:41 AM, Rahul Nabar <rpnabar at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I came across this very interesting thread on a related mailing  list
>>> that I thought would be quite relevant to those of us using Dell
>>> hardware. Apparently Dell has started hardware-blocking hard-drives
>>> that are not "Dell certified".
> 
> http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/dell_perc_11th_gen_qualified_hdds_only/
> 
> Cheers,

I purchased some cheap Dell servers a few years ago Poweredge 1600SC's I 
think. I went to upgrade their CDROM drives with some DVDROM drives we 
had spare and the systems refused to boot. When I phoned Dell support 
they told me the servers wouldn't operate with non-Dell drives so I 
don't think this is a new policy - but maybe they had different policies 
for different servers.

Anyways, I haven't had much interest in Dell servers since then - I'm ok 
with your support entitlement being degraded if the BIOS detects 
non-qualified parts in the system but refusing to operate a commodity PC 
with other commodity PC components isn't what I want from my system vendor.

-stephen

-- 
Stephen Mulcahy     Atlantic Linux         http://www.atlanticlinux.ie
Registered in Ireland, no. 376591 (144 Ros Caoin, Roscam, Galway)