Reply to post: Re: Supermicro rocks...

Supermicro's ability to enable should worry IBM and Lenovo

the spectacularly refined chap

Re: Supermicro rocks...

They don't shaft you like HP does with an ILOM that shuts off the GUI once the OS boots unless you pay a bunch of money. I hate them. HP makes good gear, but they try to nickle and dime you to death for stuff that's just a bit flip away.

No one runs their server from the ILOM unless they have to, but when you do it's critical. And when it costs another $300/host to add that feature, it's just crazy.

Yes, I bought an HP MicroServer a few months back, great little system but they seem to go out of their way to gouge you. The ILO was a key selling point but to unlock it to the point it was genuinely useful they wanted as much as the server cost in license fees. Found a key generator on the torrent sites, ran in in a sandboxed VM, job's a good'un. Similarly the optical drive - it's a standard extra-slimline drive but with non-standard cable and a proprietary bracket. HP wanted £100, but a drive from Amazon, solder up a cable and half an hour's metal bashing to form a bracket and the job was done for £20 - you can work around them but why should you have to?

Even then it's still an appliance because of it's integration. If Supermicro did something similar it'd be based around an ITX mobo so if in three years you need more umph you swap it out for something newer. Can't do that on the HP.

OTOH that server cost me £120 plus drives after cash back. From memory that's around the starting price for Supermicro's IPMI equipped mobos, not servers. As the old adage goes, you pay your money and you make your choice.

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