mattjw916 2 #26 January 26, 2006 Google is hardly what I would call "mission-critical computing". Think more along the lines of systems that keep watch over the world and keep our soldiers and civilians safe(ish). Think about it like this: you build a server/workstation, you've owned it for a few years and have come to rely on it's availability and it seems to work fine for what you need it for. Then one day, it goes down, for some unexplained reason. You figure it's the hard drive so you run out to Fry's or CompUSA and pick up a new one and stick it in, but the BIOS won't recognize it. Now your business starts to get affected at this point, you have to stop everything you are doing to troubleshoot the issue. Let's say you think it's a BIOS issue, but since it's a homebrew system, you can't remember what model of motherboard it is so you start scouring the website of the manufacturer, which is located in Taiwan, and does a poor job of updating their English-language website. More time gone. After finally finding the model of motherboard you download the update only to discover they haven't made any updates for that model motherboard for about 3 years, hence the hard drive you have still won't work. More time lost. Now you are forced to hit one up one of those computer recycling stores for an older hard drive or maybe even eBay. More time lost, etc, etc, until finally you get to restore the computer from backup... you do have those up-to-date, right? Now, wouldn't have been easier to have kept the computer that you are relying on a support contract with the vendor? Hard drive fails, call vendor, vendor priority overnights hard drive (unless you have a higher class of service which could mean same-day on-site service), you or field-rep installs hard drive, restore from tape, continue with business. While the likes of Google may, or may not since I'm not familiar with their network, use DIY systems, the distributed nature of a network load-balanced web application server system is a far cry from the putting all your eggs in one basket approach of your single-point of failure SQL server as an example. If Google looses a web application server, you won't even know since there are, according to a DNS query, 3 front-end servers for the alias "www.google.com" load balancing requests across what is likely a dizzying number of back-end application servers. The point of all of this gobbly-gook above is not to say my way works and yours doesn't by any means. I'm only trying to make people aware of some of the issues I have encountered after working in the industry for almost 12 years now. While support contracts and vendor-integrated systems are indeed _initially_ pricier, when the rubber meets the road, I want a service-level agreement in hand that says if problem X occurs, here is a 24 hour support number I can call and can continue to escalate my issue until it is resolved to my satisfaction. Having dealt with the call centers of many many companies as well, I'd take my chances with HP over Dell anyday.NSCR-2376, SCR-15080 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Zoter 0 #27 January 26, 2006 Interesting that you refuse to accept testimonies from at least two people that their Dell systems are reliable and suitable for their needs. Yes my Dell system is proven reliable , is what I need to do the work I do and came in at a great price..... Just thought I'd spell that out for ya...... Perhaps I was just lucky and managed to get a Dell system that works...... (Me along with the many millions worldwide ...) And I also got a three year 24hr return service contract thrown in when I bought the system......which I had to use just once to have an upgrade done.......guess what....They picked it up on a Tuesday and it was back with me 24hrs later.... No Dell complaints coming from me...... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mattjw916 2 #28 January 26, 2006 QuoteInteresting that you refuse to accept testimonies from at least two people that their Dell systems are reliable and suitable for their needs. Where on earth did you get that assumption from my last post??? Talk about a huge leap there... My opinion regarding Dell is based on over 10 years in the industry and having integrated over a billion dollars worth of hardware from a wide array of vendors. Sorry, but a couple happy-customer testimonials his hardly going to override that. I know a couple of people that absolutely love Gateways... that doesn't mean I'm going to run out and tell everyone to buy one. NSCR-2376, SCR-15080 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
freakydiver 0 #29 January 26, 2006 Strange - my dell is going on 5.5 years old now and runs latest pshop and premeire just fine. Never crashes, not once (no doubt it will tonight lol). -- (N.DG) "If all else fails – at least try and look under control." -- Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
freakydiver 0 #30 January 26, 2006 We use Dell 1850s and 2850s for about 6 billion dollars a year in soa income for mortgage transactions. Those have been our standard for like the past two years now. We use them for all of our environments, DEV, QA, CT and PROD. We have had zero issues and complete 100% uptime for two years. One time a drive got disloged by a techie and our CO LO and dell was notified by the onboard diagnostics and had a new drive sent to us the next day even though we didn't need it. I guess one of the largest mortgage transaction companies in the world must be happy with their "wal mart" quiality rack servers - they keep buying them. Our CTO worked for DOD, DOE and NSA. He must be dumb I guess... -- (N.DG) "If all else fails – at least try and look under control." -- Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
freakydiver 0 #31 January 26, 2006 Off topic but F it: Check out these various google papers on architecture - they are doing some really cool stuff: http://labs.google.com/papers/index.html Also - I'm highly considering the purchase of a rack mounted system for home since hell, why not. The prices are getting better and better every day and the reliability factor is always on the up and up. I don't think its a far cry for a serious video editor to go this route now if not in the near future... -- (N.DG) "If all else fails – at least try and look under control." -- Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nate_1979 9 #32 January 27, 2006 QuoteThey also are good with RAID stuff. You can get a RAID controller and if your looking for speed in rendering this maybe an area to help with that. Im not sure if this is a major joke point (I havent gotten around to raiding my HDs on my editing machine) but at one point I would like to test it and see if Premier Pro responds well to it. From the little I know about RAID- when done properly it increase HD writing speeds pretty well- but if you loose a drive you lost your info. You need a minium of three hard drives to do this safetly. A standalone windows drive with a back up partition. And two identical hard drives to RAID. I forget if RAID0 or RAID1 is what we are looking for- but know its an option if you find out it is a promising investment. Easy to do with them. Info on RAID, be careful what you choose, some of the options are pretty unstable and can cause you to loose alot of data, others can keep your data safe even in the event of a drive failure. If you stripe your drives (RAID 0) (make more than 1 hard drive into one logical drive by evenly splitting (striping) the data between them) and you loose any one of those drives, everything you have is lost.. I never use this, to me it's just too much of a risk to say that all of my drives in a system will not fail, any one of them can become the weak link... Much more risky than 1 drive IMO. The big advantage is that this will increase your hard drive read/write speeds quite a bit.. If you mirror your drive (RAID 1) (make it so that two drives are always kept identical) you obviously only get the space of one drive, but everything is much more secure since one drive can die and the other drive still has everything. Disadvantage is that you can loose speed as the computer writes everything twice. Then you have RAID 0+1, this is just stupid IMO. I like the striping w/ parity option (RAID 5) , this requires atleast 3 drives, one of those drives is a parity drive and all the others in the set are used for actual storage space... You have less unusable space than you do with RAID 1, it's faster than RAID 1, not as fast as RAID 0 (the more drives the faster it is), and you can loose a drive and the system will not loose data... Raid 5 kicks ass as long as your controller is good and fast . FGF #??? I miss the sky... There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mattjw916 2 #33 January 27, 2006 Quote We use Dell 1850s and 2850s for about 6 billion dollars a year in soa income for mortgage transactions. Those have been our standard for like the past two years now. We use them for all of our environments, DEV, QA, CT and PROD. We have had zero issues and complete 100% uptime for two years. One time a drive got disloged by a techie and our CO LO and dell was notified by the onboard diagnostics and had a new drive sent to us the next day even though we didn't need it. ...and the company I work for did $86 billion in revenue last year. Is it a testament to the quality of the servers providing the back-end services? Not really. HP was one of the pioneers of SNMP-based management that enables those servers to "call-home". Most third-party products out there that provide this functionality are very derivative of the original HP Openview suite of products. Each one has their strengths and weaknesses though. QuoteI guess one of the largest mortgage transaction companies in the world must be happy with their "wal mart" quiality rack servers - they keep buying them. Our CTO worked for DOD, DOE and NSA. He must be dumb I guess... meh... no comment... NSCR-2376, SCR-15080 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mwabd1 0 #34 January 27, 2006 Alright.......Dells......HP's........Compac's.........I really have no intention on getting a mass produced name brand computer. As far as a service contract I think that I can fix it if it breaks. The origional point to the thread was to get a recommendation on what brand of MB to use and to those of you who offered up advise, thank you. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
freakydiver 0 #35 January 27, 2006 Didn't mean to start a pissing contest - just trying to say that my dell works fine I guess. Sorry to take over your thread mwabd1. Good luck (-: -- (N.DG) "If all else fails – at least try and look under control." -- Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
pmedley 0 #36 January 27, 2006 Hi! I have a AMD (Athlon 64 X2 3800) system built on a Asus A8N-SLI. This board uses a nForce4 chipset from NVidia. The configuration I have uses 2 Western Digital HDD in RAID0. After the first OS (Win XP) install, the system started to auto-reboot (because of a system error). I run a memory test and found out that one of the memories was damaged. After changing the memory, the problem remained. I've googled a bit about the system error and my hardware configuration, and ended in the nvidia forums and found that this was a drivers issue. After doing all the things i could find to possible solve my problem, the PC is still rebooting randomly. So, consider all the option you have. Maybe you can start on the AMD's web site to see what motherboards are recommended, by them, to your CPU. After choosing the MB, u could check other hardware compatabilities for that motherboard, on the web site of the motherboard manufacture. PMedley Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
YISkyDive 0 #37 January 27, 2006 [to the above:] Can you get the OS to launch in safe mode? Also- for some reason my post "disappered" so I dont feel like rewriting the long question that I had- but on the subject with two drives in RAID0- would anyone believe that to have a significant rendering speed increase? I have an ASUS NF7 Motherboard for the orginal AthlonXP processor. Its actually a great board wiht the Nvidia(sp?) chipset. The only problem I have found in once in awhile the Nvidia Chipset does generate compbatilbilty issues in the area of "driver managament." My optical out sound does not work(SPDIF) with the latest driver reaseas- and randomly my SlaveHD 'disappears' - I have to reload the drivers and its fine. Keep that in mind when checkin out your MB. I dont know if the NVidia chipset is more reliable now. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest 1010 #38 January 28, 2006 Quote Also- ... but on the subject with two drives in RAID0- would anyone believe that to have a significant rendering speed increase? No, not for rendering. A rendering application won't be disk-bound (ie, the application waiting for the disk to finish a request before continuing). I imagine it'll be mostly CPU bound, hence the advice up-thread to get the fastest CPU you can afford. You can have it good, fast, or cheap: pick two. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
goobersnuftda 0 #39 January 28, 2006 Quote but on the subject with two drives in RAID0- would anyone believe that to have a significant rendering speed increase? I have a Raid0 setup and the disk access is smoking fast. The CPU does the rendering though. Works the best when you have to scrub through a +2 GB uncompressed video file. Fast. I have a 3rd HD I use for extra backup incase the stripe blows up. Always backup unless you can afford to lose it. BTW, Premiere Pro v2.0 is out and WOW are the requirements to edit HD video steep. Dual processors and Raid0 pretty much required but if you have a GPU capable video card, it does some of the video rendering and takes the load off of the CPU. [url "http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/systemreqs.html"]CLICK HERE[url] Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
YISkyDive 0 #40 January 28, 2006 Thanks man for the info- Dave Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Zoter 0 #41 January 28, 2006 QuoteSorry, but a couple happy-customer testimonials his hardly going to override that Perhaps you should start again at the start of the thread.....even with the title of the post. And what you have here are at least two testimonials from people with Dell systems using them for the intended purpose stated in the original post.... saying they are fine, no problems......contrary to your 'multi billion' dollar installations yada yada yada....advice. one........ I doubt that the original poster would be buying from the same supply/support chain as your 'mission critical, multi billion.....yada yada ' ......and the systems/support/hardware are probably very different to a non corporate buyer from Dell (personal sale). And here you have two people who have bought personal systems from Dell and are very happy with them for video editing. Get it? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
pmedley 0 #42 January 28, 2006 Quote[to the above:] Can you get the OS to launch in safe mode? Yes, why? PMedley Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
YISkyDive 0 #43 January 29, 2006 I dont know- I was just trying to think if its a 'driver' conflict.. and thats what it must be. because windowsXP loads its own drivers everytime it loads in safe mode. It doesnt news preexisting drivers. Im guessing it cant be a hardware conflict. I wonder if you installed the latest Nvida drivers in safemode if it would allow you to start up in regualr? I never had a problem like this- I had a problem with the os always crashing at 39% in an install.. it was shot memory. If you want more help- my dad is a PC consultant that is pretty good. I should talk to him in the next few days, and if you send me a PM / Specs / Problems maybe he can get back to you and help you. dave Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mattjw916 2 #44 January 29, 2006 If a driver problem is suspected you can use "Driver Cleaner Pro" to remove all traces of the existing nVidia drivers before installing a fresh set. Installing the "WHQL" certified versions reduces the chance of driver problems since the testing process is a bit more rigorous. Don't install drivers while in safe mode. link to driver cleaner pro: http://www.drivercleaner.net/ Follow the "readme" lest you suffer the consequences... this is a multi-step process that will remove all trace of the driver you choose to remove.NSCR-2376, SCR-15080 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
