What Do You Look For in a Big Iron Review?

ValourX writes "We're starting to write more reviews of enterprise-class hardware and software and although we've done pretty well with our reviews, the high-end products are a lot trickier when it comes to testing and evaluation. Obviously it is not possible to build an enterprise-grade 'your neck is on the line' production environment just for writing reviews, but maybe we can do something smaller, just for testing purposes. What do you as an IT professional want to read in a review for a server OS or a high-speed switch, or a big iron server or proprietary workstation? What tests should we run? What results and feature comparisons are going to be most meaningful to you?"

Most important feature

[RandoX]

If you knew our operations guy, you would test resistance to physical attacks.

Mostly...

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Pictures. I like hot chicks standing next to big servers. Big servers in action shots are good too.

Here are a few useful tests:

[Skyshadow]

Useful Tests:

Bossman Compatibility: Verifies that the hardware vendor has taken my boss's boss out to dinner and purchased suitably expensive drinks. Rating based on the number of stars the restaurant recieved, although points may be docked if the filet mignon was a little overdone. This one is related to the...
CYA Verification: Vendor must have a name recognizable to people who read periodicals such as "CTO Magazine" so, when it breaks down, I can say "who ever hear of XVY Company's gear being bad?" If the vendor is a company like Dell which also sells home PCs, this metric should also include going to my boss's boss's house and verifying that his Dell is running okay so I don't have to hear shit like "I don't know why we got Dell, my desktop at home has problems all the time, too, and it's only six years old!"
Sweetness Factor: Not as much of a factor as it once was, depending on how big of iron we're talking about. But it the thing has, say, requires a cooling tower that happens to have a waterfall built into it, that's point right there. May conflict with....
The Under-Desk Operation Profile: Since it'd take at least a month and a dozen SRs and books of useless paperwork just to get the beastie screwed into a rack at our NOC, the server must both fit nicely under the desk in my cube with all the other machines and not be too loud. Generation of excess heat is a plus since the facilities people have set 61 degrees as a reasonable temperature for my office in the winter.
Extra-App Capacity Testing: For when some moron in another department comes in and convinces my boss's boss that "all that server is doing is running the backend for our entire operation, so can we put our incredibly messy half-working app on it too and treat it like QA?" If this server can alert a Terminator unit to go to the aforementioned coworker's home in the middle of the night and slay him and his family, this requirement can be waived (oh, I wait for the day this will be waived....)

I'm sure there are a few other benchmarks you could run, but honestly these are the Big Five that I decide on.

Re: Enterprise-Class Hardware

[theanonymousbrit]

Make sure it has a good number of phaser arrays and photon torpedo banks.

Re:Mostly...

[lucabrasi999]

I like hot chicks standing next to big servers

I just love that this has been moderated as "Insightful".

big iron?

[Frogg]

when i'm choosing a big iron, i try to find one which can get the big creases out of my big pants

IBM

[mdf356]

As an IBM employee, I want to see brain-washingly favorable reviews of IBM hardware. Especially the ones that will make me money. :-)

Cheers,
Matt

Re:duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Corea, big irons you!

What kind of action?

[WillerZ]

I'd be interested in how well it works after the following:

Coffee spilt in one of the CPU PSUs.
Coffee spilt on the keyboard (if present).
Coffee spilt in one of the disk system PSUs.
Swapping two of the disks in an pack... ...while the system is on. ...while the system is off.

More seriously, it would be handy to know the ratio of workload handled to watts consumed. Workload:cooling required would also be handy.

Phil

No, no...you gotta mix it up like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

...IN SOVIET KOREA, old people iron YOU!

Cash

[CrazyJim1]

How many shells does it hold, and is it a revolver or clip. Does it come with a silencer to avoid pesky street light cameras?

please include:

[spectrokid]

+ doom fps
+ Gentoo compile time
+ Overclocking possibilities
+ Case mods, preferably with blue neon lights

Lots of details matter

[robocord]

1. How much redundancy is available
a. Are there multiple fans or fan trays?
b. Are there multiple power supplies?
i. How many are needed to power the system?
ii. Can they be powered on and off individually?
b. Are there multiple CPUs?
i. Can they fail independantly, without outage?
ii. Can they be partitioned or dedicated?
c. How about multiple storage controllers?
2. How maintainable is it?
a. Hot-swapability
i. CPUs?
ii. Fans?
iii. Power supplies?
b. Manufacturer longevity
c. Product line stability
d. Off-the-shelf parts?
3. Physical specs
a. It's gotta be rack-mountable, right?
b. How many U high?
c. How deep?
d. Are there pluggy bits on the front, back, both?
e. How much does it weigh?
f. How bloody annoying are the rack rails?
g. Can you open and close it with things mounted directly above and below?
h. Can you swap out any and all parts without unracking?
i. How much heat does it generate?
j. How much power does it require?
k. Is there a maximum rack density specified?
l. Is it loud enough for OSHA to require ear plugs?
4. Expandability
a. How many net ports minimum/maximum?
b. What kind of net ports can it have?
c. How many storage thingies (hard drives, etc)?
d. Is there an upgrade path for the CPU(s)?
5. Servicability?
a. Is there a "lights out" managment board available?
b. Does it require dedicated management software?
c. Does it support SNMP?
i. Standard MIBs?
ii. Custom MIB(s)?
iii. Can it send traps?
d. Are you forced to connect a monitor/keyboard?
e. Is it supported by the obnoxious management/monitoring software of my choice?
F. Miscellaneous
a. Can it run Linux?
b. Does it force me to run Microsoft software?
c. Ok then, what the hell O/S does it run?
d. Can I have the source?
e. Please?
f. There's no SCO crap in there, right?
g. If I fill a whole rack with them, will it impress the chicks?
h. Ok, then how do I impress chicks?
i. What the hell's a chick, anyway?

I'm sure I've left out a ton of stuff, but those are some quick thoughts.

Re:Big Iron - Devaluing the Brand

[cakefool]

If it wouldn't make a good sci-fi set, or look like a CRAY, it ain't big iron. I recently relaxed the requirement that it has tape reels and men with clipboards wandering through it. They can now be women...

Re:Not Speed

[Anonymous Coward]

1. 2^x = 6. Solve for x.

Hey, don't be dissin' my 2.585 proc rig! It had three processors, but then I spilled some soda on one of them.

Re:What kind of action?

[harrkev]

And also don't forget such things as:

1) How many men and what type of equipment are needed to move this for the next lan party.
2) HL2 and Doom 3 benchmarks.
3) Case nods. Do any come with lights and lighted fans? If the 19" rack is not entirely filled, you could put a REAL AQUARIUM in there (but this makes it harder to move for LAN parties.
4) Most big iron does not have much in the way of quality sound, so you should test this out.
5) Does the 19" rack come with handles for easy portability to/from the lan parties.
6) Heat production. Should the host of the lan party install additional air conditioning capacity?
7) How expandable are the graphics? Some blades do not have room for a full-size graphics card.

It's easy

[upsidedown_duck]

To capture the essence of the enterprise, you need to hire four newly graduated students and have them write the worst program possible in Java. Don't worry, the "worst" part comes automatically. Then, apply this program to several brands of servers and see which one actually survives. That is the one you recommend in the review.