Australian Retro Computing

Michael Dale

I've created a forum for Australia Retro Computing

U-NITED Warranties

Michael Dale

One of the computers we purchased for a customer came with a 3 year onsite warranty. The extra 2 years of warranty was provided by U-NITED Warranties (aka United Warranty) (http://www.u-nited.com.au/ or http://www.unitedelectrical.com.au/).

As of today I am still waiting for a response as to where the machine is.

1. They rarely answer their support phone in under 10 minutes. 
2. The URL that they provide while waiting on hold to check the status of the job is incorrect and takes you to a server error page. I even emailed them about it, no reply.
3. It took over a week before the machine was even collected.
4. The computer has now been with them for over 2 weeks.
5. They stopped updating their job status website (I found it even though it isn't even linked on their website, FYI it is https://www.u-nited.com.au/registrations/) weeks ago so we now need to call each time to get any information.
6. We still haven't been given any information as to when the computer will be returned.
7. Either the computer has been formatted (the drive was fine) or they have never connected it to the internet as it has not checked in to our Kaseya system.

Update:

• Their phone system now seems to lock up and reboot, kicking me off the line and out of the queue! The amount of time I have wasted with this company is crazy.

March 4th Update:

• Still no machine or any update on when it will be returned. Awful awful service.

March 7th. Still no update.

March 14th. After a lot of bitching I was finally able to get a part refund on the computer so that I can replace it myself! So crap, but I can get a new machine much faster than this company can return phone calls!

I will never use this company again for anything.

Expensive HP

Michael Dale

So the cheap dell was nice for the price.

This server was much more expensive.

2x6 core Xeon (24 total including HT), 24gb Ram, 1.1TB SAS 10K Raid 10, VMware.

Still only 24gb of ram.....haha. It's a nice server though.

 

Cheap Dell

Michael Dale

You can purchase some really cheap computers these days. Makes me wonder why cloud computing is so popular (hint people are lazy).

Dell T310
Xeon 2.5GHz Quad
2x500TB Raid 1 HDDs (SATA so not great, but should be fine)
24gb Ram (yeah sweet)
Windows SBS 2011
3 year onsite warranty.
1gb ethernet link with unlimited transfer between server and workstations :p

$2800/inc GST.

24gb Ram and SBS for less than $3k, seriously nice.

It has been interesting to see my clients thoughts on cloud computing. Some are all for it, while others won't touch it. Long term it seems like the only solution, but for many customers they simply don't trust these cloud providers (and I'm mostly in agreement).

Intel Matrix Raid is Bad

Michael Dale

So we've got two computers in the house using Intel Matrix raid.

First our server is using it for our Raid 1 boot drive, and my old desktop (just upgraded to an i7 iMac) was using it for its Raid 5 boot drive.

From what I've found, if WIndows crashes or isn't shutdown correctly the Raid will require rebuilding, both these systems do it. While it is rebuilding the performance is awful. It also takes up to 24hrs on our server to rebuild the array.

The other thing I have found is that the write performance on the Raid 5 drives is really really slow. My desktop was running it, bad idea I should have just stuck to a single drive, there was no real reason for using Raid.

Both systems aren't bad/slow (Q6600s with 8 and 4gb ram). We've also got a Raid 5 in the server running off a RaidCore PCI-X card and it is great. Never needs to rebuild and it is quick. 

So yeah not surprising that the RaidCore actually works well but I didn't think Intel Matrix raid would be so bad...

New Dev Box

Michael Dale

Got myself a new dev box today:

AMD Phenom x3 8450 (3x2.1GHz)
2gb Ram 6gb Ram

Currently running Windows 2008 (for some Hyper-V testing). Seems to run pretty quick, just needs more ram ;)

New Server

Michael Dale

We're just in the process of replacing our server. Specs:

• Windows 2008 64bit (with Hyper-V for Web and VoIP)
• Intel Q6600 (Quad 2.4GHz)
• 4gb Ram (soon to be upgraded to 8gb)
• 2x300gb Raid 1 Boot drive
• 4x750gb Raid 5 Data drive

So email is currently down but will be back up tonight.

New Computer

Michael Dale

I purchased a new desktop computer the other day (first one since 2003). Unfortunately the video card has not come yet, so my vista "experience" score is interesting :)

The computer is an Intel 2.4GHz Quad Core with 4gb Ram and a 8800GTS (currently an X300se, heh).

New Server

Michael Dale

Finally got a new server running. So I'm in the process of moving the websites over it to.

It should be faster too (it is an Athlon 64 3000+).

web server

Michael Dale

The Web Server is having issues *again*. This time it looks like one of the CPUs isn't working. So it's going to be running with a single cpu until I get around to fixing it :| EDIT: Still having issues. Might be a power supply issue, but we don't have another one to test with.