[Info-vax] 1 year.

[Craig A. Berry]

On 8/6/15 10:17 PM, terry+googleblog at tmk.com wrote:
> On Thursday, August 6, 2015 at 10:27:42 PM UTC-4, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>> A bunch of irrelevant whining about long-discontinued Integrity systems
>> snipped.
>
> Thank you for your carefully, well-thought-out rebuttal to my post 8-}

Sorry I was dismissive, but rx2620? Seriously? It is certainly true that
Itanics sucked by every measure compared to Alpha until about five years
after Alpha development was stopped. But that was 10 years ago.

I believe it was Rob Brooks of VSI who said in this forum awhile back
that the rx2660 was a big step forward hardware-wise. I have an rx2600
at home and we have rx2660 at the office and can confirm that the rx2660
is a lot nicer. The on-board RAID controller sucks but can be upgraded.
Of course it came out in 2007 and is two generations back now, so it's
getting a bit long in the tooth.

> Given that HP was unable to provide support for a system that was on
> a support contract with them, I'm not sure anything newer (or older)
> would fare better.

That's a serious problem and I have certainly seen HP techs floundering
while trying to do the simplest things with Integrity servers. Whether
it would be any better with ProLiant I don't know, but I suspect it
would be worse with Alpha and getting more so as HP winds down Alpha
support. At least with recent-generation equipment they can eventually
get someone on the phone somewhere within HP who knows how it works
(such as that installing a storage controller that requires a PCIe
expansion card only actually works if you install the PCIe expansion card).

> And since HP won't provide a loaner (or even remote access) to prove
> the situation has changed (even if it would mean the sale of a half
> dozen of those systems if successful), my newest experience is with
> the RX2620.

Dealing directly with HP for purchasing of anything less than racks and
racks full of systems is not likely to lead to anywhere good. Ask a
reseller to sell you one with a 60-day return policy or rent one for a
couple months. IslandCo has rx2660s starting at 999 USD and rx2800 i2s
at 6,795. I believe these are refurbs but certainly adequate to test the
waters. If you want half a dozen systems, you should look into blades.