If you have a corporate account with Dell, they provide the web site premier.dell.com for account management and ordering, or at least contract pricing. I received an email recently imploring me to check out all its new features. I did, and there were none that I could find that were less than a few months old, but as the email pretended to come from my account rep, I thought I'd email back and make a few ... feature requests of my own. And since I'm enjoying my curmudgeonly mood today, you all get to read it too:

* Make it so that it's fast enough to convince me that it isn't being powered by an 80-year-old invalid transcribing the web pages onto my computer by tapping it out on a telegraph. It really is slow. Painfully slow. I frequently end up doing research on the main Dell site and then duplicate a configuration on the premier site for the sole reason of having an eQuote of it.

* I noticed last night that I couldn't combine pieces of two eQuotes into a new eQuote. That is, I had one quote with a few laptops I'm looking at ordering, and another with a series of desktops I was deciding between. I decided on one of the desktops and wanted to create a new quote by copying the laptops in the first quote and the one desktop in the other quote to a new quote without having to go through the customization process again. I think the simplest way to do this would be to have a "copy eQuote to cart" option somewhere. If there already is one, I couldn't find it. (By the way, if all of those eQuotes are spamming you or someone else, and there's some other way to save a cart -- that is, if I'm using the eQuote feature improperly -- let me know.)

* I don't really care about your preconfigured models; they just muddy the waters. Obviously, there has to be a default configuration, but if I, for example, go to the workstations page and search for "Vista with Downgrade to XP" and "Precision Workstations", I get 14 results over two pages, of which five are different T7500 configurations, and there are doubles of several other models. If I don't restrict the OS, I get 28 total results over three pages. You only actually have six distinct models. In addition, the descriptions don't tell me what is different about them. All but one have the exact same description, with the remaining one only adding the term "64" under the OS listing, despite the title of one of the others claiming "64 bit". In addition, if I go to the extended "compare" page, I still might not see a difference. For example, it doesn't show any difference between the T7500 models beyond the OS difference I just mentioned. Yes, some of the titles indicate "Dual Processor" and/or "64 Bit", but I'm not sure I can trust the titles. (Reason further down.)

* The model search is almost useless. You pretty much have to already know which model you want, in which case, why not just have a list of models? The model summaries in the search results page don't give enough information to make a decision. In particular, they tend to show things that can be changed on the customization page, not the things that really make the models distinct. I would suggest that the search options include model-specific features, not model categories and names. I would like to be able to search for things like "tower workstation, dual E5540 CPUs, 16GB RAM, 4 hard drives" and have it show me all the models that can be configured with those options. In addition, this would make the arbitrary distinction between desktops and workstations (and maybe even servers) moot, which would be helpful. Laptops are distinct enough that it might make sense to keep them separate. (Not that you do so now; there are laptops in the workstations category.) And, combining this with the multiple preconfigurations complaint above, the default configuration doesn't need to match all of the search requests; it just needs those options to exist. It would be nicer if it knew they could exist in combination, but, even if not, that would be a huge improvement. For an example of a very useful search engine, check out NewEgg's Power Search. For example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/PowerSearch.aspx?N=2032280010&SubCategory=10&GASearch=3

Even their basic "Guided" search is far more powerful than your only one. Given, they don't have configurable models, but it really shouldn't be that much more difficult.

* Sometimes the search doesn't even actually work correctly. Ordering by "price low to high", for example, doesn't order the results by price. Remember the five T7500s from above? If I check the "T7500" checkbox, I only get four results; one of them goes missing. Oh, I see why now. One of them has the title of "T7500", but is actually a T5500. Then again, one of the actual T7500s is a "Preision" T7500, without the "c". This is why I said above that I don't know if I can trust the models' titles.

* There are some things that can only be configured with the correct base model choice. If I know that I want to configure, for example, an OptiPlex 360, you show me four default configurations: Desktop, Minitower, Desktop N-series, Minitower N-series. I can kind of understand the desktop vs. minitower (though, if it's going to be that way, I don't understand why they don't have separate model numbers), but the difference between N-series and not-N-series is just the operating system. You already have a configuration option for OS; why not just include the N-series' FreeDOS there? I understand that it might restrict some options, but you already have option dependencies; why should this one be any different? This should apply to all of the other OS choices, too. Sometimes different OSes are split out to different base models and sometimes they aren't. At least your "search" will deal with that option. And some models (the T610, for example) can be configured to have one or two processors; others (the T7500, for example) require that you choose the right base model. If the single-processor version doesn't have a second CPU socket, it shouldn't be the same model number. If it does, why isn't it just a configuration option?

* The "E-Quotes" link that exists on many of the "My Premier" pages often just takes me back to the Premier home page.

* The "Account Team" gadget on "My Premier" still shows my "General Contact" as my old Dell rep, who was laid off months ago.

* "My Systems & Peripherals" should be a prominent link. But if I go to premier.dell.com, the fastest way I can figure to get there is "My Premier" (which takes *forever* to load) -> "Select a different product" -> "View and Edit My Systems List". In addition, if and when you make the "My Premier" page faster than molasses in winter, there should be a "My Systems" gadget.

* On the "My Systems & Peripherals" page, there is a column for "System Description". If I import a list using the "Import Systems & Peripherals", I can have that field set to the hostnames I use for my computers here, like "rd-wl-faulk". If, however, I try to edit that field directly from the page and I try to use a hyphen, it tells me "The field does not accept any special characters. Please try again." and refuses to let me change it. Even if it already contains a hyphen. Even if I accidentally clicked on the field and didn't change anything. Also, there's no way to cancel editing that field without reloading or navigating away from that page.

* Oh, and this is probably outside your sphere of influence, the tech support chat only works under Firefox about one in every ten tries.

Wow. All exactly right and succinctly put. Too bad no one over support level will ever actually read it.

Well, my account rep claimed she passed a previous piece of information to her manager. Certainly no one who can do anything about it will ever read it. But I had fun writing it today.

I guess you also have a "Premier" account. Did you get the "check out our new features!" email yesterday? Did you see anything new, other than the bloated ultra-slowness they "upgraded" to like three months ago?

Their site is probably running on Dell systems. And that's the problem right there.

My observation lately is that Dell actually makes pretty solid high-ish end x86 and x86_64 computers, with a decent amount of administrative features, as opposed to build-your-own servers or build-it-for-me servers, and at a relatively low cost, as compared to IBM or HP, and often as compared to the DIY servers, if you have an account with them.

And since I'm not going to be running Windows on them, this isn't an OS-related choice, as I'm sure you're going to tell me I should be buying Xserves.

I quickly configured a comparable Xserve and Dell 1U server. (Well, it was quick at Apple, not so much at Dell.) I started with the dual E5520 Xserve, and to make it match a configuration Dell would allow, took it to 6x1GB RAM and 3 year AppleCare ($950: ouch!). Total price, $4699. The comparable Dell, with 3 years of upgraded "ProSupport for IT" NBD service, albeit without an OS: $2280.01. Now, if I were to add a Windows Server OS onto that, it could add up to $5200 to the price, but God only knows why anyone would do that. Personally, I prefer the variety of free operating systems available to me. But, for the sake of argument, assume I want to buy 3 years of Red Hat support (which I can guaran-damn-tee you is going to be far, far, better than any support Microsoft would give you; don't know about Apple). That would take the price up to $3016.34, which is still two-thirds the price of the Xserve.

Now, I'm not one to complain about the so-called Apple tax, AKA the "buying a quality piece of equipment tax", but I can't come up with any reason why I would want to pay that much more for a server of similar quality, unless it was as an alternative to Windows, in which case it wouldn't be more expensive, or if I actually needed MacOS X Server, and I can't imagine a need for that.

Bitt, I'll see if I can find somewhere suitable to send this to. Working far from Texas and in a largely independent division I've no idea who the responsible people are.

I'm not sold on Dell servers yet, as my previous job didn't really give me much appreciation for them. In every regard they always seemed at least 2-3 years behind the Proliants in terms of features. Though, I suppose thats where some of the cost savings comes in.

I'll be eyeing the blades from Dell to see where they go, as it's clear they copied a lot from the HP Bladecenter systems.

Regarding XServes, pretty much agree with you there. They are ok boxes, and bundled with OS X Server they can make a great solution for a small business. But I don't see them hitting enterprise level with the way they currently are.

Thanks! I owe you a beer. If you get something to happen, I owe you a pitcher!

Despite the fact that I said they have good admin features, I'm not really an expert on that sort of stuff. I've never found most of it very useful. I was mainly thinking of error logging and predictive RAM error checking (ECC logging). Besides that, the only things I'm really interested in are serial (or telnet-able) consoles.

What kind of stuff are you thinking of?

I've got some new ones!

* If your session times out, you sometimes get a page that says "Your shopping session has expired. If you are a registered member, please click here to sign in to My Account." ("Click here" is a link.) If I click there, it pops up an identical page. If I click on it there, it just reloads the page.

* eQuotes apparently are sometimes partially visible to my account rep, such that she can see some of the line items, but not others. This makes getting official quotes somewhat difficult.

Also, it seems to work somewhat faster if you use Google Chrome. I tried it because Chrome's Javascript engine is supposed to be the fastest out there and it appears that a lot of the net.wait is JS-related.

Some quick features that I found handy back when I supported HP systems were:

1. Recording of OS panic screens. Basically if Windows blue screened, or Linux kernel panicked, the lights out board would capture it and allow it to be replayed in the browser interface.
2. Firmware logging of events in one central place, including OS, RAID or other events. This was viewable either via tools in the OS, on LCD panels, via the lights out web server, or Insight Manager. Dell appears to have most of this now too.
3. Diagnostic panels. Most of the Proliants had a handy little LED lightboard somewhere that would point out problems, ie a dead fan, bad memory, and so on. I think some of the Dells have this as well now.
4. Raid portability. Being able to just move a hard drive array between servers or even entry level SAN devices came in real handy, both in the lab and for many customers I supported. I had a particular SUSE install on a disk I could toss into nearly every machine in the lab.
5. Out of box setup. With a lights out controller, the only thing that would need to happen in the datacenter would be physical racking of the server and plugging in power and network. With the included tag containing the DDNS name of the lights out system, along with the username and password, the rest of the setup could be completed back at your desk. This includes virtual cd-rom and floppy functions that worked via Java. I believe Dell has mostly caught up here now.
6. Drivers stored in firmware for loading Windows. My memory is a bit foggy here, but there was some feature that allowed drivers to be stored in a firmware disk image, and then used when loading Windows and needing a 3rd party RAID or SCSI driver.

The Insight Manager software package was also decent at providing an overview of the health of all servers in a datacenter, and was free last I looked. I'm not sure what Dell has to match it, though I'd hope they have something by now.

I believe that Dell's management interface, DRAC, has most, if not all, of those features now.

It used to be that if you were running Linux, none of that stuff would work, so I never paid any attention to it, and lately I haven't really been paying attention because the stuff I've been ordering has been lower end stuff for almost pure number crunching, and the additional cost of the management card just hasn't been worth it.

On the Proliant side, all of it worked under Linux, even for the customers that were rolling custom kernels. Most of the focus to get it running on Linux was not only due to customer demand, but also internal demand. The SmartStart CDs that shipped with the server used to run Windows 9x. Instead of porting everything over to the NT kernel and having to continue to buy Windows licenses for a management disc, they ported it all over to Linux. The versions I remember working with booted X, then Mozilla full screen to display the web interface being driven by apache with PHP.

Cost wise, I've never paid close attention to the differences between the vendors of servers. Now that I may be involved with hardware purchasing down the road, I'm starting to though. Also keeping an eye on Dell's blades, to see how they follow the HP ones. For what we need, blade enclosures with mixed servers and storage blades would work well, and is something Dell doesn't currently provide.

Storage blades seem like a waste to me. You're paying a good price for the enclosure in order to save money on power consumption, and then you put in something that is pure power consumption? It seems like an external JBOD attached to the blade enclosure's IO ports makes more sense. Maybe there's some feature to the storage blades I'm not aware of.

I really wish that blade solutions weren't so expensive. They would make perfect sense for our environment, but I can't justify the extra expense. I need to do some power consumption calculations, but I don't think it's going to help. We are running short on power, so maybe, though.

There aren't many advantages of storage blades over an external unit, beyond consistency in rack deployments and such. There is a possible gain with the IO going over the backplane of the enclosure instead of out over a cable, but probably not enough of a difference to be noticeable. It does eliminate some cabling, and allow for easy remote changes to what server can see what storage block.

For most of the hardware I'll need to help roll out, remote accessibility and reconfiguration will be nice to have. Ease of hardware rollout is also a factor, as (with luck) the product will be wildly successful and we will need a lot of servers online quickly to meet customer demand.

I got a Dell T610 for use at home as a file server, and it has the DRAC card on it. I'll have to diddle with it when I get a chance.

Turns out it's the entry-level iDRAC6-Express, which means that it's not really very useful for anything. No remote console, no virtual media. The only thing you can really do is access some logs. Even better, if the server is off, the remote access is off, too. Which makes that function to turn the server off kinda ... dangerous.

Here's some more in reference to Dell's Energy Smart Solution Advisor:

* If I add an enclosure, I then have to add blades to the enclosure. Fair enough: as expected. I added one and configured it, then tried to change it to ten copies, but was told: "Invalid Quantity / Please enter either 1 or 16 for quanity." (And "quanity" is how it's spelled on the web site.) So now I have to add an additional nine blades and configure each of them individually. The mere act of clicking the "Add to Solution" button and waiting for it to allow me to do anything else takes over 15 seconds.

* When I configure the individual blades, I've found that it frequently doesn't get updated until I navigate somewhere else, and the configuration options don't change when they should. (For example, if I select a different CPU, the second CPU still shows the old CPU that was selected.) This means that if I change several options at once, they often get thrown away, which means that the most reliable way to configure the blades is to select an option, then select a different blade, change an option there, go back, etc. However, it takes about five seconds every time I select a new blade.

* Sometimes the "Total Input Power" is clearly wrong. It seems to remember the power from an individual blade, and show me "126.7 watts" when I have a chassis with ten blades configured on it. It seems if I want to see the power consumption of the whole system, the most consistent way to fix it is to add a new blade, then remove it, though that's not 100% reliable.

* It will allow me to configure a chassis that has more than 16 blades.