On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 08:48:52 -0600, Nick Reinking wrote:
On Jan 9, 2004, at 7:57 AM, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
A quote: Google's infrastructure: Google uses consumer-level hard disks and 'really cheap, unreliable memory.' ('If something fails, it's not you, it's probably the memory.') They have around 10,000 commodity-level Linux computers set up in a parallel network ('the largest Linux cluster in the world'), and anticipate the death of 'a few machines every day.' Their network is set up to be able to route around a failed machine instantly.
Google also has a much larger hardware budget than we do, and a small army of PhD developers working on their code. ;)
... much pricing data follows ...
Do these Dell prices include support? Ideally, it would be nice not to have to worry about people having to drive all over the place to fix a small hardware error. That's the biggest reason (IMO) for buying a Dell machine - if we're were not going to take advantage of their support contracts, then we would probably be better off buying cheaper, faster machines elsewhere.
Hm- yes. They include Support:
* DB server: 3Yr BRONZE Support, Next Business Day Onsite, S/W Support * others: 1Yr Parts + Onsite Labor (Next Business Day) + 1Yr Technical Support
We can save 300$ on the DB if we go for '3Yr BRONZE Support, Next Business Day Onsite'. The others don't seem to have smaller Support packages. Maybe in the consumer/desktop department? I've only looked in 'small business- servers'.
The only reason for picking Dell is my lack of knowledge about cheaper american companies. I know where i'd look for it in germany, and i personally consider Dell to be in the medium/upper price bracket. If you know a cheaper source with reasonable reputation let us know.