dhirennaidoo
Well-Known Member
Greetings!
I have a bit of a...situation.
At work (we do industrial controls, SCADA, PLC, etc) I have a customer who has some annoying agreement with Dell S.A. This means that whatever workstation we supply has to be a Dell or else their I.T. department will not maintain it.
So, what I need is a workstation that can accommodate full-height PCI-express cards (proprietary communications cards) and on-board RAID (want to put some SQL and other log data onto a RAID1 set. Software RAID is fine, since low read/write once every hour). The reason I say workstation is because I do not want to use rack-mount servers as there are some physical constraints at the site and also need a regular tower as when a component like the power supply fails (for example), a replacement is easy to source within a day.
When I explain these requirements to most Dell resellers here in Durban (Pinnacle, Vuwani/Tarsus, etc), I feel like I'm asking for nuclear fusion. I have to very carefully explain what RAID is, or repeatedly get a quote for a bone-stock Optiplex 3020 with a single HDD. I'm sure there are some Optiplexes that support on-board RAID. I just can't get clear confirmation from the international Dell website.
Does anyone have any suggestions or even just a contact number for a reseller that understands what RAID is?
I have a bit of a...situation.
At work (we do industrial controls, SCADA, PLC, etc) I have a customer who has some annoying agreement with Dell S.A. This means that whatever workstation we supply has to be a Dell or else their I.T. department will not maintain it.
So, what I need is a workstation that can accommodate full-height PCI-express cards (proprietary communications cards) and on-board RAID (want to put some SQL and other log data onto a RAID1 set. Software RAID is fine, since low read/write once every hour). The reason I say workstation is because I do not want to use rack-mount servers as there are some physical constraints at the site and also need a regular tower as when a component like the power supply fails (for example), a replacement is easy to source within a day.
When I explain these requirements to most Dell resellers here in Durban (Pinnacle, Vuwani/Tarsus, etc), I feel like I'm asking for nuclear fusion. I have to very carefully explain what RAID is, or repeatedly get a quote for a bone-stock Optiplex 3020 with a single HDD. I'm sure there are some Optiplexes that support on-board RAID. I just can't get clear confirmation from the international Dell website.
Does anyone have any suggestions or even just a contact number for a reseller that understands what RAID is?
Last edited:
