Recommendations Dell vs Lenovo?

[coolrunnings82]

Seeing as how the majority of the members of this forum seem to have a lot more enterprise experience than me, I am looking for a hardware recommendation for the following setup.

I'm setting up a small business network for a client of mine using Server 2012 R2 with HyperV Role. The plan is to have two physical servers and a VM that runs SQL Server 2012 replicated between both. The database is about 5-6gb and is memory hungry but not hit by more than 3-5 users at a time. I plan to have the secondary domain controller run backups of the workstations on the network and the primary DC to do roaming profiles. There are a total of 10x users on the network and about 1tb of data total. I plan to use a Samsung 850 Pro 512gb SSD in each for the OS and VM role and mechanical drives for mass storage. Everything will be hooked up via a gigabit switch.

I've used HP (yuck), Dell, and SuperMicro servers in the past. Of those, I've had the least amount of drama with my Supermicro machines. However, everything I've worked with is towers due to noise levels. This will be the first time I set up rack servers. I'm on a pretty tight budget and I'm looking for some recommendations for reliable rack servers. I've initially been looking at Dell and Lenovo for warranty reasons but would appreciate some recommendations...

 

[Jeggs101]

Dell but why not look at HP?

Also those 850 look nice but MX100 are less than half price and with power loss protection. Remember Samsung does not put enterprise features in consumer drives. Also neither option is going to be supported by the vendor.

 

[Diavuno]

super micro is my prefered...
dell is what most of clients run.
Lenovo's are OK

HP is putting their head further up there rear again. they make good stuff but its just a pain to work with... HP'S WAY OR THE HIWAY.


If noise is an issue they make sound deadening racks or get some 2/4 U

actually as much as I could do without HP, it's my quietest server to date (excluding low power via type boxes)
my DL180's with dual cpu's are pretty loud, but tower pc like quiet when you remove the riser cards (not much good then, but quiet!!!)

 

[coolrunnings82]

Jeggs101: what's kept me away from Crucial drives is some really bad experiences I had with the M4. I had 3x failures in the space of less than 2 months and those are the only SSD failures I've had out of over 100 drives I've put into use. Additionally the MX100 uses 16nm RAM which has me a little worried about write endurance. I've had wonderful luck with the Samsungs in the write-endurance department. You bring up a good point about power protection though! I'll have to factor that into the decision. Do you know if Samsung's releasing an enterprise version at the same time as the 850 Pro with a supercap by any chance? With regards to support, since all the vendors seem overly proud of their drives, I have found that it's much simpler to buy 2x as many drives as I need and deal without their support than it is to rely on them. Fewer arguments when I replace a drive over bad SMART data before it's actually totally dead that way too...

starshooter10: You nailed it with HP: their way or the highway. That does not sit well with me. Additionally, I've had some experiences with HP's "Pro" support regarding some defective ML110 servers I had. It took over a week to resolve a bad motherboard. I got argued with about the failure diagnosis for over an hour, had to get a manager on the line to approve it, then the guy who they sent out didn't even know how to install the motherboard and smelled so bad it took 3 days to get the BO out of my office. LOL! That's not happening again.

 

[Chuckleb]

I agree with you about the Crucial drives, I also had many m4 drives fail due to poor garbage collection. Drives were not being detected until left plugged in and sitting at the bios screen for a few hours. That was their recommended solution.

I rma'd every drive and got rid of them all. I may try this line but am a bit concerned myself.

 

[Mike]

I agree with you about the Crucial drives, I also had many m4 drives fail due to poor garbage collection. Drives were not being detected until left plugged in and sitting at the bios screen for a few hours. That was their recommended solution.

I rma'd every drive and got rid of them all. I may try this line but am a bit concerned myself.

I wonder what you used the drives for? I'm sure the GC wasn't great compared to other, equal, drives of the time but still...

 

[Chuckleb]

They were desktops and laptops, nothing fancy. Standard usage with laptop doing to sleep, travel, etc. Desktops were on all the time but not doing anything intensive. They all failed in the same way, unable to be detected in any systems until left plugged in so that it could GC. Then usable for a few weeks or so, long enough to pull all the data off. We had some data loss a few times but good backups.

It was every m4 basically (15 or so). We tried the C300 series or whatever and that died as well.

Switched to Samsung and better overall so far.

 

[MiniKnight]

I think the MX100 M550 and M500 are all significantly different than the M4 was. Those suckers are known for being the pseudo low end read workload enterprise drives. GC is not so good on them but so long as you are not write hammering them they work really well (have about 200 of the three drives combined all working well.)

 

[Chuckleb]

Excellent! I'll probably order up a pair and give them a shot. I've been meaning to try something else.

 

[Patriot]

I think the MX100 M550 and M500 are all significantly different than the M4 was. Those suckers are known for being the pseudo low end read workload enterprise drives. GC is not so good on them but so long as you are not write hammering them they work really well (have about 200 of the three drives combined all working well.)

I don't know about the 550... but the M500 is still crap and is not suited for any enterprise workloads.

I've used HP (yuck), Dell, and SuperMicro servers in the past. Of those, I've had the least amount of drama with my Supermicro machines. However, everything I've worked with is towers due to noise levels. This will be the first time I set up rack servers. I'm on a pretty tight budget and I'm looking for some recommendations for reliable rack servers. I've initially been looking at Dell and Lenovo for warranty reasons but would appreciate some recommendations...

Please define your budget... and I am curious what problems you had with HP... especially when you consider dell an option. I wouldn't let one used bargin bin server define your vew of the whole line. oO

 

[MiniKnight]

I don't know about the 550... but the M500 is still crap and is not suited for any enterprise workloads.

We have many workloads that write <10GB/ day. The 480-512GB ones handle without issue. We've even had a tech pull a server power cables mistakenly with a M500 and no data was lost upon reboot.

Heavy write we use Intel drives though since they are just great but expensive.