DELL vs HP

itdaddy

wow I was looking at both sites and it seems DELL blows HP away as far
as cost, size and power of their servers over HP.

Am I wrong. Are Dell Vm server good or bad?

any opinions on Dell over HP.
I mean HP is way costly and you dont get much?
And is it true what I am seeing they install vwmare 4.1 Esxi
on the server ready to go and web infrastructure client into ready
to build vms???

Chris:/*

I work with both and I find the HP servers less prone to hardware failures statistically. That being said they are more expensive so I would have to do a cost analysis to compare the component replacement of failed hardware of the Dells vs the expense of the HP servers. I really do not care if a vendor installs an OS, I wipe and install the OS all over to make sure there are no vendor resident vulnerabilities. Despite the nature of ESXi it is still a good practice.

N2IT

If their servers are as bad as their laptops and desktops I would go with HP.

Daniel333

I have not found one brand to be better than the other, have about 300 servers about 50%/50%.

BUT, I find HP's iLO to be a lot nicer than Dell Drak or what ever it's called. Also I found Dell easier to deal with to order parts.

undomiel

We're a Dell shop over here, never really had any problem with them and their prices have always beat out HP. We've deployed a number of Hyper-V clusters on them and have had no complaints. Their Equallogic SANs are pretty fun to work with as well. I'd have to respectfully disagree with Daniel as I've found iDRACs easier to work with than iLO. But again, we do work with a lot more Dell machines than HP. Also I've worked for Dell support so that's always helped me a bit in talking to them.

Forsaken_GA

In the interests of full disclosure - I now work for Dell, seeing as how they bought my company a couple months back.

However, nothing I'm going to say carries any bias. Prior to the acquisition, we were already using Dell gear in the datacenter, so I formed a pretty solid opinion about it. All in all, it's fine, the issues are about what you'd expect in an enterprise operation. A few drive failures here and there for the machines that still have them instead of taking storage off the SAN, a bad DIMM or two. Those kinds of things will happen no matter who your vendor is.

My personal servers (and I do mean servers, Atlanta has a hell of a grey market for sysadmins) are all HP's, because I got them as fresh pulls from a refresh, and at a damn good price. So I have experience on both sides of the fence. iLO and DRAC are both pains in the rear to work with, but they're life savers when you need them. As far as I'm concerned, pick your poison and buy whatever you're most comfortable with. If the bean counters force you into the cheaper option, it's not as bad as that kind of thing normally is.

blargoe

Dell's servers are decent enough. They did have a higher rate of power supply and disk failure with the 9th gen and below in my experience, but the 10 and 11 gen servers I've never had to call in for a part.

I would shop on price I guess.

rwmidl

I've used Dell servers for years and never had any problems with them. In fact, I've found Dell support is EXCELLENT even when the equipment is no longer covered under any warrant/maintenance plan.

certhelp

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

My personal servers (and I do mean servers, Atlanta has a hell of a grey market for sysadmins) are all HP's, because I got them as fresh pulls from a refresh, and at a damn good price.

What's a grey (or gray) market for sysadmins? Or you mean market for servers? ??:

it_consultant

The main reason anyone goes with HP is because of their rock solid reliability. They are 15% more expensive than dells. However, the one reason I use them is the have dual port hard drive slots. I can use the same RAID controller for SAS and SATA drives, which is a flexibility that comes in surprisingly handy.

I can count on one hand the amount of times I had to actually use the 4 hour support for hardware, they were all dells.

itdaddy

wow great analysis thank guys very much for your input!
yeah we have some HPs that have never had any issues...and 1 dell that has never had issues. hard choice..support is very important..and price.
thanks

Forsaken_GA

certhelp wrote: »

What's a grey (or gray) market for sysadmins? Or you mean market for servers? ??:

A grey market is basically a market whose distribution channels are unauthorized and unintended by the manufacturer, but entirely legal (as opposed to a black market, where the goods and services might be slightly less than legal). Ebay and craigslist could probably be considered the biggest grey markets in the world.

However, if you know the right folks in ATL, and are willing to put cash on the barrelhead, you can find some incredible deals on all types of gear. I imagine it's the same for any major metro area.

RTmarc

You are not going to find too many outstanding issues with any of the big name vendors. HP, Dell, and IBM are all going to be rock solid. We're actually starting to deploy the Cisco UCS boxes and they have proven to be the same.

itdaddy

thanks a lot. I might be going with Dell since they are way lower in price and have great support.

astorrs

RTmarc wrote: »

You are not going to find too many outstanding issues with any of the big name vendors. HP, Dell, and IBM are all going to be rock solid. We're actually starting to deploy the Cisco UCS boxes and they have proven to be the same.

+1 to everything RTmarc said. HP, IBM, Dell, Cisco - each has their ups/downs, but all will do the job well - find the best fit and run with it.

bertieb

I agree with RTMarc and Astorrs. As long as your production server doesn't look like this;



It'll be fine

Chris:/*

I choose more specific models that don't cause problems for my team. There are versions of Cisco routers and switches out there that have not been recommend on these forums just as there are Dell, HP and IBM servers I won't recommend. Those same models are eventually phased out because of complaints and increased MFR. Just research the specific model before buying and you should be fine.

RTmarc

itdaddy wrote: »

thanks a lot. I might be going with Dell since they are way lower in price and have great support.

Before buying anything I'd get a quote for a UCS system. For the past few months we've been getting better pricing on their systems than anyone else; surprising for a Cisco product.

itdaddy

I will look into that thanks a lot guys yeah I like to really reserch model before I buy it to make sure it is rock solid! thanks so much!

undomiel

bertieb wrote: »

I agree with RTMarc and Astorrs. As long as your production server doesn't look like this;

It'll be fine

It is frightening how many server rooms I have gone into with white boxes looking like that. And the previous IT provider/person wonders why they lost the contract/job.