Dell smell ! Or do they...?

In my role as Chief IT Monkey, yesterday I got to order a new Dell server to run ColdFusion 8. Buying hardware from a third party is always a bit of a tough decision for me, as I have a natural inclination towards building systems myself, so that I know exactly what's gone into each one. However, the nice thing about buying from Dell is that if the thing goes wrong, you can have an engineer on-site within a matter of hours. The other good thing is that from what I've seen, Dells don't go wrong very often!

The Dell website is a never-ending source of irritation. If the server isn't too busy, you can peruse a fine selection of machines, all at seemingly low prices. Take the basic T100 server that we bought yesterday - advertised as being "from £219". Click on "customise" - and the price starts to go up very, very quickly. Want a decent processor? Add £100. Want more than 1GB of RAM? That'll cost you. Want a floppy drive? Backup solution? Network card? Optical drive? By the time you've added everything you need, the price has gone up to £1,321 + VAT. This is true of all the Dell systems I've seen - by the time you've added the basics (like a processor, case, mouse, etc. - the bits that make it work), the price has trebled. They really ought to just say "from £800-odd" rather than the mis-leading £219 figure, which would pretty much just buy you an empty box with a 1-year warranty.

The server isn't too bad really, but I costed the parts and could have built it myself around £600 cheaper, minus the operating system. We stipulated that we need it here by the end of this week, and the official delivery date on the system is October 9th, so we might have cause for complaint unless they get a move on.

I managed to avoid the hard-sell from the Dell sales person, who was incredulous that I didn't want a RAID setup, or any backup software. "So... just the one hard disk? Are you sure, sir? If that disk should go wrong...". The trouble with RAID setups is that once they're installed and working, you forget about them. If one of the disks fails a year down the line, you'll have a hard job finding an exact replacement, as new disk models are coming out all the time. If you go RAID, make sure you buy a redundant hot-swap spare, and leave it inside the case - meaning you'll need to buy 3 hard disks as a minimum. We've opted for a 15k RPM SATA drive, which should shift the data at a fair rate of knots, and our in-house backup system provides entire disk images in case of failure. Let's hope Dell deliver a decent server!