Hi,
Just looking at a Dell PE4600 rack server. Seems good build quality, but
I have some serious concerns, wondering if anyone has ideas?
1. The CD/floppy "combo" drive is a joke. The chances of this thing
lasting more that five minutes are questionable. However, it seems to be
the only bootable device (at least in the BIOS), so if it breaks you
lose your CD _and_ your floppy! Not only that, it has a proprietary
connector, so it's not exactly easy to grab a spare floppy off the
shelf? I thought it may be possible to set it up to boot from a USB
memory stick as a back up, but I can't find a way to do this.
2. My device has a built-in tape drive, the "backup operators" must
access the front panel direct in order to change the tapes, but there's
a "soft off" button just above the tape drive; I can't find any way in
the BIOS to disable this or set it to "4 seconds". They might press it
thinking it's the eject button!
Other interesting questions; should I go for RAID 10 or RAID 5, and
should I use my Adaptec PCI 39160 card for the tape drive or just use
the built in SCSI controller? It's got 2Gb of memory, do I need any
special setup switches when installing Win2k?
--
Gerry Hickman (London UK)
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