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gently caress Dell! My desk is currently overflowing with boxes of return parts, 4 different Equallogic controllers, a couple of disks etc. It has not been a good couple of weeks.
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Nov 7, 2014 10:19
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| # ? May 6, 2024 02:46 |
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Wicaeed posted:Wait what You cannot disable RAID on the higher-end PERC8 cards (such as the H710, H710P, H810, etc). You cannot disable the cache. You cannot enable passthrough on them. This causes problems for anyone that wants or needs passthrough. Dell was made very aware of this, so now their new cards actually do allow you to disable RAID and the cache. If you are using the H710/H710P/H810, the closest thing you can get to passthrough is to put each and every hard drive into a single-disk RAID 0 configuration. On the PowerEdge R720xd, this means you must build & init 12-24 individual RAID 0 arrays. This is a headache to even have to do once. When any single drive fails though, you cannot simply replace it; the slot is marked as "failed" RAID. You have to swap the failed drive, destroy the RAID, then re-create a new single-disk RAID 0 array. Yes, people do this. I did this. However, I said "gently caress this" and just pulled the drat card out and replaced it with an H310. Unlike the H710P, you can actually disable the H310's RAID function. We run FreeBSD w/ ZFS. I want the OS to have direct access to the disks. I do not want any cache or RAID abstraction layer getting in the way. So, yes, I wanted the H310. Everything disabled. Direct passthrough access to all connected drives. ...and it's been working perfectly for two years. The new Dell PERC9 cards, such as the H730, H730P, and H830, do have an option to disable everything and enable JBOD/passthrough. Do those work on the R720xd systems? Dell's site lists them as "not supported". Anyway, it doesn't matter. The H310 seems to work fine.
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Nov 8, 2014 06:31
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Fired off a request for a quote, only to be informed we have yet another new account manager. I believe this is the 4th or 5th one in a period of 12 months. Holy hell do they really have THAT much turnover?! I think I'm just done with them at this point.
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Nov 10, 2014 21:45
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True story: I once burned through three account managers over the course of one quote. That was the day I decided it wasn't worth dealing with sales anymore. Is it on the site? Price it on the site. Bam, that's the competitive decision price. "Call for quote"? Better luck next time; I'm shopping your competitors.
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Nov 10, 2014 23:35
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stevewm posted:Holy hell do they really have THAT much turnover?! Yes.
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Nov 12, 2014 23:33
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Xenomorph posted:You cannot disable RAID on the higher-end PERC8 cards (such as the H710, H710P, H810, etc). You cannot disable the cache. You cannot enable passthrough on them. This causes problems for anyone that wants or needs passthrough. Dell was made very aware of this, so now their new cards actually do allow you to disable RAID and the cache. Disregard, I think your'e right. I was mistaking "disable cache" with "enable pass through" hence the confusion. Malek fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 03:17
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Initiated a return, I warn dell that the card I originally purchased it on was no longer in used and has been replaced with a totally different number. They say wait until they get the product and actually start the process to worry about that. They get product, I tell them again. Nothing. I email, someone asks for an address to send a check to because they can't change the card the refund goes onto. I give them the address. Another week goes by, still nothing. Called them today, and they said the refund was put back onto the original card on November 12th  I explain to the people on the phone that I told them I no longer had that card, the response I got was "the bank knows to put it on the newer cards even though it's a different number" which sounds like complete bullshit. Of course, the refund never hit any of my accounts (called the bank to double check). So now I have no idea what's going on with this refund.So yeah, basically gently caress Dell. I'm gonna give it another crack tomorrow and if I don't get any results I'm just going to go to my credit union and try to initiate a chargeback. Hopefully they won't balk because I bought the item back in April. Once again, gently caress dell.
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Nov 18, 2014 23:02
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I know this isn't a "gently caress Dell" question, but I figured that there would be more people in this thread familiar with Dell hardware. Does the PowerEdge R610 support 3.5" drives? Did Dell ever sell it in that configuration? It's a small, 1U rackmount server. It holds six 2.5" drives. I haven't seen it come any other way. Dell's hardware manual states that is the only configuration available for it. I may be buying some off-lease refurb systems, and the seller (a big company) has a ton of the R610 systems for cheap and swears that they can be loaded with 2.5" or 3.5" drives (my choice). All of Dell's documentation clearly states that 2.5" was the only option for the system. I'm pretty sure it's an old Triple Channel system that I can only use 2.5" drives with, but the seller has *confirmed* with me that it works great in their configuration: memory installed in dual channel configuration and with up to six 3.5" drives (WTF?).
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Nov 19, 2014 14:57
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Your bank will know what to do with the refund. I'm a return policy abuser so I've dealt with this sort of stuff from lost credit cards before.
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Nov 19, 2014 18:46
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Xenomorph posted:I know this isn't a "gently caress Dell" question, but I figured that there would be more people in this thread familiar with Dell hardware. 2.5" are the only drives available from the website for the R610 and last I recall, it only has 1 size of backplane. You might be able to directly wire a 3.5" inside of it but kiss the hot swap ability good bye.
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Nov 19, 2014 18:54
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I tried to make a license request about a Sonicwall, but apparently the e-mail address the form on the Sonicwall website submits these things do is not the correct one. I will never understand why companies insist on making it difficult for me to give them money.
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Nov 25, 2014 17:15
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chocolateTHUNDER posted:the response I got was "the bank knows to put it on the newer cards even though it's a different number" which sounds like complete bullshit. With that said it sounds like Dell gave you lovely customer service. They should've been able to explain from the start of the process that this is how it works and set your expectations at that point. So it does sound like you had a bad experience / dealt with people who kinda sucked.
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Nov 25, 2014 17:31
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Col.Kiwi posted:Sorry I know I'm pretty slow with this reply, but at the bank I used to work for this was exactly how it worked. We were under the impression it worked that way at all the other banks too. Honestly if doing it like that didn't work I'd be blaming my credit union for not having their poo poo together. It's not like its a complicated thing to link an old deactivated card number to the new replacement card number for these sorts of purposes. Yeah, I'll eat my hat on this point and say that my credit union confirmed to me that this is a totally normal thing. I will however follow that up by saying Dell never did actually send my refund in the first place anyway, and I had to argue on the phone with them for 45 minutes before I finally got a trace number and a confirmation that they pushed it through.
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Nov 26, 2014 05:20
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All that cost cutting by Wintel OEMs must have taking its toll which is actually understandable, since Microsoft and Intel takes the bulk of the profits of the sale of PCs leaving them with scraps to fight on the table. That's why we have this hilarious situation where $180 phones has vastly better screens than $500+ laptops, and traditional PC OEMs like Asus diversifying into ARM phones etc. Yet if the OEMs tries to raise quality by increasing prices, most people rather buy Macbooks, so they are stuck now between a rock and a hard place in the ultra-commodized PC market.
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Nov 27, 2014 02:33
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They dont have to raise prices they already offer them they just arent in stores
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Nov 27, 2014 04:18
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So -- just got a killer deal on an XPS 8700 SE. At order confirmation, the estimated delivery date is 12/16/2014. Just checked online, estimated delivery date is 12/23/2014. Dell. 
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Dec 5, 2014 17:48
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We use Dell for everything here (Optiplex SFF desktops, servers, latitude laptops) and have very few complaints, other than the atrociously slow 5400 RPM hard drives in the desktops. I've literally never had to call in for service on any of our equipment at this particular location for nearly 6 years.
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Dec 5, 2014 18:45
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Palladium posted:All that cost cutting by Wintel OEMs must have taking its toll which is actually understandable, since Microsoft and Intel takes the bulk of the profits of the sale of PCs leaving them with scraps to fight on the table. That's why we have this hilarious situation where $180 phones has vastly better screens than $500+ laptops, and traditional PC OEMs like Asus diversifying into ARM phones etc. Yet if the OEMs tries to raise quality by increasing prices, most people rather buy Macbooks, so they are stuck now between a rock and a hard place in the ultra-commodized PC market. Don't people buy Mac's simply because of the lack of quality of modern pcs? There's so much bloatware, a terrible marketing pitch and even low physical quality. I spent nearly two hours trying to get all of the bloatware of a HP Computer and when uninstall Norton I had to stop and explain why suddenly big white bold words you're unprotected appeared then stare at the uninstall to find the button that actual was in a much smaller font for uninstall. Marketing is just as bad, it's too complex. Model Z86-41A doesn't mean anything to a typical consumer and with electronics so commoditized it's not necessary. Apple's play is simple, there's a small computer, a bigger one then maybe a pro model. What's even more stunning is physical quality. Touching modern pcs is just gross. The membrane on keyboards have no bounce, no click they're too squishy. As I hold some laptops I can not only feel but see it bend. 
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Dec 5, 2014 18:50
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Tab8715 posted:Don't people buy Mac's simply because of the lack of quality of modern pcs? I don't think there is a lack of quality Windows PCs, I just think that the market is over saturated with sub $600 garbage laptops. It seems like the $300-$450 range = junk, $500-700 = midrange, and anything over that you actually start to see some quality laptops that rival the price of Apple products. You really aren't paying too much of a premium for Apple products over similar PC competition nowdays.
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Dec 5, 2014 22:20
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Auron posted:I don't think there is a lack of quality Windows PCs, I just think that the market is over saturated with sub $600 garbage laptops. It seems like the $300-$450 range = junk, $500-700 = midrange, and anything over that you actually start to see some quality laptops that rival the price of Apple products. You really aren't paying too much of a premium for Apple products over similar PC competition nowdays. These are great points. My mom is one of those people that doesn't understand why her lovely 300 dollar Best Buy special laptop with a crappy AMD processor, 5400RPM hard drive, and 3GB of RAM with a 3 cell battery runs like poo poo and doesn't last more than an hour on a charge. Trying to get her to buy a reasonable Dell off the refurb site is met with "I'm not spending that much money on a laptop". The Windows market is flooded with cheap poo poo that ends up hurting Windows/Microsoft. Remember when Vista came out? Vista wasn't necessarily a terrible OS, it was severely hurt by the cheap computers that they loaded it onto that performed like crap. Apple controls their entire ecosystem and end user experience, both hardware and software. They also have the best marketing game in town. Apple products are seen as a premium product, and they're marketed as such. I will say their build quality is quite nice, and their pricing has come way down and is much more in line with comparable hardware from the big PC OEM's. For instance, I have a E7240 work laptop. Beautiful machine and very comparable to a loaded 13" Macbook Pro or a top of the line Macbook Air. It cost about 1900 dollars though just like a similar spec MBPro would.
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Dec 5, 2014 22:49
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My dell story is that I have a enterprise Dell UPS in my server rack with full support on it. I got an alert that the battery test failed. I call Dell, they tell me to run it again and check it. There's no manual way to run it. You have to wait until it runs again three months later. So I wait three months, it doesn't run. The test actually tells me to power down all my servers and unplug the UPS and see what happens. I email him and say I'm not going to do that. He responds, well, talk to me again in three more months if it doesn't run automatically again then just power down the servers and unplug the UPS and see what happens.
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Dec 6, 2014 00:33
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SIR FAT JONY IVES posted:My dell story You get pretty used to the type of alerts that come through on various bits of kit. My current favourites are the phantom fan, temp sensor errors.
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Dec 6, 2014 01:00
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Just had an issue with a brand spankin' new system (Optiplex 9020 mini tower). Hooked it up and the fans immediately spool up to full speed. It then beeps stating that there was a previous thermal event. I think to myself "That's odd, it's just out of the box, it shouldn't have had a chance to even have a thermal event". Went into the BIOS and cleared the event log. Sure enough, it comes back. Ran the diagnostics and it says the thermistor for the ambient air temp shows a reading of -67F. Pop open the side panel and look for the thermistor. It's attached to the inside front of the chasis and connects to the motherboard using small thin cable. Turns out, whomever had put this together managed to get the cable pinched between the case and the speaker/beeper. Unhooked the speaker and moved the cable and right away the fans begin spooling back down. Had to clear the event log and away we go. SIR FAT JONY IVES posted:Dell Story
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Dec 6, 2014 01:28
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TWBalls posted:
Is there another piece of software to run locally that gives more options? We purchased the network mgmt card for them and the webgui doesn't have an option for it. The LCD panel has a way to select battery test but it only has a schedule option. Dell support just forwards me a snippet of the manual which is unhelpful.
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Dec 6, 2014 05:23
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SIR FAT JONY IVES posted:Is there another piece of software to run locally that gives more options? We purchased the network mgmt card for them and the webgui doesn't have an option for it. The LCD panel has a way to select battery test but it only has a schedule option. Dell support just forwards me a snippet of the manual which is unhelpful. Do you know the model or the approximate date of manufacture? When I was searching for mine, I saw a Dell forum post that said that 2012 and newer units should have a Service Tag, so if it's fairly recent it should be easy to find. If it's older, I had to find it manually. Support.dell.com, it should be under: Servers, Storage & Networking > Rack Infrastructure and choose the model. For my model, the software was called Dell UPS ULNM and MUMC Management Software. ULNM = UPS Local Node Manager MUMC = Multi-UPS Management Console
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Dec 6, 2014 06:17
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Sent in my Venue 11 Pro with a faulty pen and/or digitizer. Got it back with a totally replaced screen assembly, same pen. Now it isn't just faulty, it plain doesn't work. This is the fifth RMA. Every time I send it in, it comes back with something different wrong with it.
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Dec 6, 2014 08:54
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SIR FAT JONY IVES posted:My dell story <snip> manual test Pull the plug or flip the breaker, that will test the batteries.
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Dec 6, 2014 11:26
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Thought this might be appreciated here My stupid POS Dell Optiplex 780 USFF that I use because it was gifted to me showed CPU Temps of 65+C so I got creative with the snips. Cut out the Stamped steel grille and stuck a wire grill minus some in there:  It's hacky and ugly as poo poo but I don't care. plastic fascia didn't quite fit so I had to trim it a bit with the diagonal cutters. If you push it really hard it'll get up to 55C now. Maybe it won't die now.
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Feb 3, 2015 03:40
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Trying to upgrade our VMware license, and also trying to get our current license up to date. Dell does not want to sell it to us for some reason. Ignored, blew off, they just don't want our money. It has taken so long our quotes expired and now the VMware rep is getting us a new quote. Been trying since November! My last email I sent, the guy doesn't work there anymore or something. This mailbox is no longer monitored. Please reach out to shambra_speckmiear@dell.com
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Feb 3, 2015 14:11
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Bob Morales posted:My last email I sent, the guy doesn't work there anymore or something. Dell reps have a very high turnover rate.
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Feb 3, 2015 15:18
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Spazz posted:Dell reps have a very high turnover rate. Depends on your market cap and/or vertical. One of their strategies recently has been to try and spin the small to medium (medium to Dell is still pretty darn big) business out to channel partners. They just don't want to deal with it themselves. Any sales guys left in the small to medium business teams aren't much more than glorified call center reps and any that do end up worth a darn will get cherry picked into the large business teams. You will get some very hands on help if you are in one of their large business channels. But again, that requires some high annual spending.
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Feb 3, 2015 15:34
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Syano posted:Depends on your market cap and/or vertical. One of their strategies recently has been to try and spin the small to medium (medium to Dell is still pretty darn big) business out to channel partners. They just don't want to deal with it themselves. Any sales guys left in the small to medium business teams aren't much more than glorified call center reps and any that do end up worth a darn will get cherry picked into the large business teams. You will get some very hands on help if you are in one of their large business channels. But again, that requires some high annual spending. Those of us in the partner channels also have to deal with turnover too. My emails get sent to a "Partner_Team_X" email address now, and I'm guessing that's partially to clean up the turnover inconvenience.
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Feb 3, 2015 15:39
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gently caress. I just lost the Dell rep that we've been with for the better part of three years 
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Feb 4, 2015 08:39
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Auron posted:I don't think there is a lack of quality Windows PCs, You have to make a lot of compromises for Windows hardware and there has been a quiet consistent lag on GPU versions compared to Apple. Lenovo's X1 Carbon is only now is at parity on specs after 3 versions, HP's Z1 has consistently been more expensive and very limited despite a plethora of configurations, the Macbook Pro and Mac Pro are short on competition largely due to the price.
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Feb 4, 2015 18:45
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Going to gently caress someone up over at LogMeIn. We were using their Pro product for like $3,000/year. We started to automate some things in other ways, so we dropped the Pro clients and went with LogMeIn central which is only like $299/year. So when it came time to renew last year, our salesperson called and we explained what we were going to do. Paid the $299 and we were cool. Or so we thought. They kept us on auto-renew and sure enough last month they hit us with a $2,640 charge on the credit card. Our salesperson of course has flown the coop and nobody else at LogMeIn claims they can help or sends us to people who don't return calls.
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Feb 25, 2015 19:52
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Bob Morales posted:Or so we thought. They kept us on auto-renew and sure enough last month they hit us with a $2,640 charge on the credit card. Our salesperson of course has flown the coop and nobody else at LogMeIn claims they can help or sends us to people who don't return calls. Give them 5 business days to issue refund, or do a charge back. gently caress 'em.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:43
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Having worked as a QualXserv subcontractor for a few years (amongst other things), when I saw a few gov surplus sites had Latitude ATG D630s for 120 bucks without a hard drive, I snapped two up. Later, I dumped 16 ounces of coffee in one by accident, turned it upside down, and fired it back up the next day. They also have an onboard serial port, which was extremely useful for me. That said, the level of service you get from Dell depends entirely on how much money you spend with them, and I'd never use anything but support chat if I could help it.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:57
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I've been using Dell for rack servers and they never gave me big problems. The support has always been quick and efficient. But I have no idea how they are on other markets so I guess I'll avoid them for the rest since all these critiques.
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Feb 26, 2015 18:06
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NyxBiker posted:I've been using Dell for rack servers and they never gave me big problems. The support has always been quick and efficient. But I have no idea how they are on other markets so I guess I'll avoid them for the rest since all these critiques. this is expressly a Dell bitching thread so you should take it with a grain of salt because no one comes in here to post the 'oh that was painless' or all the days they didnt have a problem
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Feb 26, 2015 19:45
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| # ? May 6, 2024 02:46 |
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Yeah, I still really can't say anything against their server hardware. We do have the revolving door of reps and whatnot, but their recent server line is magical. iDrac 7 and 8 Enterprise and Lifecycle controller makes it really too drat easy to stand up a brand new machine that's fully updated without ever connecting a console to it. Plug in power and network and go. All firmware and all drivers are installed automatically.
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Feb 26, 2015 21:26
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