Re: Joel's Performance Issues WAS : Opteron vs Xeon

On Apr 20, 2005, at 4:22 PM, Josh Berkus wrote:

>> Realistically I don't think a 30k$ Dell is a something that needs to
>> be
>> junked. I am pretty sure if I got MSSQL running on it, it would
>> outperform
>> my two proc box. I can agree it may not have been the optimal
>> platform. My
>> decision is not based solely on the performance on the 4 proc box.
>
> Oh, certainly it's too late to buy a Sunfire or eServer instead. You
> just
> could have gotten far more bang for the buck with some expert advice,
> that's
> all. But don't bother with Dell support any further, they don't
> really have
> the knowledge to help you.
>

FWIW, I have a $20k Dell box (PE2650 with 14-disk external PowerVault
RAID enclosure) which I'm phasing out for a dual opteron box because it
can't handle the load. It will be re-purposed as a backup system.
Damn waste of money, but complaining customers can cost more...

Trust me, it is likely your Dell hardware, as moving to the Opteron
system has improved performance tremendously with fewer disks. Same
amount of RAM and other basic configurations. Both have LSI based RAID
cards, even.