Well, as always, I learn things the hard way. I decided to deal with a new company to get my server. ICompNY to be exact. They had a server with a lot of memory, for $1000. This really should’ve been my first red flag. But I figured, what the hell. So I ordered it (over a month ago). After some slow shipping, I finally get it after about 8 days. Maybe I’m just spoiled from Amazon prime, but 8 days is pretty crazy. Well, this thing is 50 lbs. No joke. I put it on the scale. I carried this thing to far corner of my house, unpacked the “unorthodox” packaging, Red Flag #2, and attempted to set it up. When I say unorthodox, it’s truly a big box, with some random stuffing in there to fill it up. No original packaging (except for the keyboard).
Well, much to my dismay, it only has DVI outputs for the monitor. I’ve been dealing with computers for a long time and this is the first time I’ve ever had not 1, but 2 video cards that only had DVI. Red flag #3. Well, I wait for amazon to deliver me an adapter… that doesn’t work, so I wait for a new video card. I get that installed, and finally I’m feeling good. I go through my day long process of updating all the windows updates, Norton, dropbox, and everything else I need to get loaded to start using this beast. I go to bed while a big batch of updates are processing. I wake up the next morning and the damn thing won’t turn on. I deal with tech support for a while, and they offer to send me a replacement. I reluctantly accept. Afterall, they offered to upgrade my processor for my trouble. Which helped, since the beast was slower than my 3 year old laptop to run Windows, Red Flag #4.
I get the new machine (it takes another 8 days, and when it arrives, I’m vacation, so I’m delayed even further). On Monday, I spend the rest of the day getting everything setup. It’s marginally faster than the first, but still slow considering it has 64GB of RAM and an SSHD. Well, I wake up the next morning, and the same thing happened. This time, the power button flashes when I use it. So I do some online hunting. I try a couple of easy fixes, works for an hour, then shuts down again. The only remaining fixes talk about a faulty power supply or bad memory. Now here’s where I royally screwed up. I didn’t do my homework to realize just how old this machine was. It was originally built in 2007. Doom on Me, and go figure, power supplies were a common issue.
Well, now I’m back to square 1. I’m hunting for reasonable systems that I can plug and play or quickly build, that won’t break my bank. AFter all of this, I’m starting to wonder if the AWS isn’t a better approach. At least I won’t be dealing with these headaches… Anyway, back to shopping.
Thanks for reading,
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike