On 03/26/98 13:45:12 you wrote:
>>Exactly how were they "bad"? Did they not work when you added them, or
>>did they work but you had to troubleshoot crashes that caused you to swap
>>them out, etc.? Netapp does indeed do testing that catches bad SIMMs from
>>the vendor, but it can't catch problems where the SIMM is damaged after
>>testing in handling, or in shipping, or improperly inserted into the board.
>
> Failed to boot w/ the error, "Unsupported NVRAM size 5MB", after
>placing the six new SIMMs in the NVRAM card. Did the memory shuffle
>(got very annoyed because it doesn't report this error until close to
>the end of the boot process) and narrowed the problem down to 2 SIMMs.
>Then I proceeded to get really pissed (only allowed to do non-emergency
>hardware maintenance on the filer Friday's after 19:30) because I spent
>over an hour and ruined a Friday night to add 2MB of NVRAM. (F330's
>support 2, 4, or 8 MB - not 6.)
When I've seen this in the past, it's been due to improper insertion of
the SIMMs into the board. But it could be the SIMMs were bad or even the
slots on the board were bad. I assume you've gotten new SIMMs since then
and they worked fine?
>>Sometimes the time at which a SIMM will fail in the future is beyond their
>>horizon of testing. It seems to me getting it straight from the vendor is
>
> How were these tested?
I can only speak in general terms. To say they're just put in a memory
tester would be incorrect; they get burned (or at least, they used to)
just like the DRAM.
>My filer didn't even acknowledge their
>exictence. Granted, they could have been damaged during shipping...
>Or, I could have zapped them when I opened the packaging while grounded
>to our ESD bench... Maybe I don't know how to install SIMMs and just
>always got lucky before... (Please excuse the sarcasm.)
No need to be sarcastic. All of those are very possible, no offense
intended to your consider memory installation skill. :)
But surely they were tested at Netapp, so it seems like you can't
"blame" them for a failure later. Is the chance of a failure later
still large enough that Netapp's testing isn't worth it? Again, that's
an individual choice.
>>only going to increase your chances of failure, unless maybe there is a
>>particular vendor with which Netapp has rarely encountered failures.
>
> I disagree. I'd prefer to go to a vendor with which _I_ have
>rarely encountered failures.
Well, that is mostly wordplay. Surely one person's experience is not
as predictive as testing thousands of such SIMMs, but most people do
develop such individual biases, especially if they get a couple of
failures in a certain vendor in a row. The point of the sentence was
simply that NVRAMs are tested and they do fail, so if you want to go
with a vendor that isn't tested, it would seem your best choice would
be one that historically had failed little in said testing.
>>Does it justify increased price? Hard to say. Depends upon the atmosphere
>>of the company/environment your in. If it's like many bosses I know, the
>>increased price isn't worth it until a component fails, and then they get
>>upset that you didn't get better quality. :)
>
> Increased price isn't a problem if you _do_ get better quality. We
>paid a 600% mark up on parts that had to be shipped back and replaced
>as soon as we tried to use them.
That doesn't mean you don't get better quality. Without Netapp's testing,
it's more probably that you would have gotten bad parts twice in a row.
If you have multiple filers, you would generally see more bad SIMMs, etc.
> I'm not saying NetApp is low quality. We've seen great uptime w/
>our F330 and keep asking for details on their HA system because we
>think NetApp is a good bet. I just don't like the way they handle
>memory and disk sales.
This is more or less what I was getting at, too. Netapp does do
quality testing, and I think that's better than no testing. Is it
worth, assuming your figures, a 600% mark up? It seems many people
on mailing list say it isn't. What about a 200% mark up?
Bruce