Best Dell Hardware for Software Development Team (Asp.Net & MS SQL 2K)

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slickrock22

We have five developers that we need to upgrade to newer faster boxes.
We have chosen Dell because they seem to offer and good
price/performance/support equation. I have historically purchased 1 yr
old processing power as it is usually good enough. I just had a recent
call with a Dell salesperson and he suggested Precision 380 with 2xSATA
drives in Raid 0 for performance. This is about $600 more per box as
he has it configured with 1gb ram and Dual video card.

My question is that is this really that much of a difference from a
dimension P4 3.2ghz with a single drive and 1 gb ram. Does the
Precision really offer $600/per box of benefit while using VS2005 and
SQL2000 on the box?

Thanks

Ryan
 
We have five developers that we need to upgrade to newer faster boxes.
We have chosen Dell because they seem to offer and good
price/performance/support equation. I have historically purchased 1 yr
old processing power as it is usually good enough. I just had a recent
call with a Dell salesperson and he suggested Precision 380 with 2xSATA
drives in Raid 0 for performance. This is about $600 more per box as
he has it configured with 1gb ram and Dual video card.

My question is that is this really that much of a difference from a
dimension P4 3.2ghz with a single drive and 1 gb ram. Does the
Precision really offer $600/per box of benefit while using VS2005 and
SQL2000 on the box?
Click to expand...

RAID-0 is a bad move for developers and your support people - it means
twice the chance for a total data failure.

Our development teams use 3.2Ghz P4 systems with 2MB cache, they used
motherboards that support onboard RAID-1, use a Dual 250GB Drive setup
with a MIRROR, 32GB for C and the rest for D - all apps/projects/data is
stored on D. The 1GB RAM is minimum if you are going to run VS2005 and
MSDE at the same time and still use MS Office 2003.

If you have a few machines that will run SQL and the others won't, then
get those users a Dual Xeon workstation, not really that much more in
cost.

Just avoid RAID-0, you don't need it or its headaches.

One other thing - make sure that you GHOST an image of their machines
BEFORE you install VS2005 and MSDE on them so that in the event of a
failure you can restore the machines to like-new state in 10 minutes.

Oh, and Dell is going to cost you a premium for their name. Find a
online shop, a no-name place, to setup a Dual Xeon PC-DL Deluxe or a
Intel Dual Xeon board and go with that. You can get the SAME parts if
you know what to spec and save about 50%, but you don't get the GREAT
dell warranty.
 
Thanks for the response. Do you have a suggestions for an online
store? Do you have a hardware combination suggestion? At a 50% cost
saving I can buy 2 for each developer (A live and a backup :). I
commonly shop at newegg, buy.com and CDW.

Thanks

Ryan
 
Thanks for the response. Do you have a suggestions for an online
store? Do you have a hardware combination suggestion? At a 50% cost
saving I can buy 2 for each developer (A live and a backup :). I
commonly shop at newegg, buy.com and CDW.
Click to expand...

I've been buying from www.5oclock.com in Ohio, but that's because they
are within driving distance for me - so if I have an issue I can take it
to them and deal directly with them.

In all, I've bought more than 40 Dual Xeon workstations and servers from
them over the last 2 years, not a single one has gone bad. I also know
hardware, use to design low-level circuits in the old days, so I spec
each part to my needs and then order it from them.

A server I spec'd from Dell, a 6600 series, 10 drives and 2GB of RAM was
just about $24,000, I paid less than 30% of that for a machine equipped
close to the Dell (still had 10 drives and 2GB RAM). We bought 4 of
those and they are now more than a year old and running strong as online
backup storage arrays.

If you tell them that you need a couple very high end Developer
Workstations with Dual CPU's and 2GB RAM, with XP Prof + SP2, and a
RAID-1 Mirror with 200GB drives, and a nice easy to use case with a 550W
PSU and an extra case fan, you'll get a nice system for a very
reasonable cost.

Since you're developing, you could use your MSDN or Action Pack licenses
to save a little money and not get the OS.
 
We have five developers that we need to upgrade to newer faster boxes.
We have chosen Dell because they seem to offer and good
price/performance/support equation. I have historically purchased 1
yr old processing power as it is usually good enough. I just had a
recent call with a Dell salesperson and he suggested Precision 380
with 2xSATA drives in Raid 0 for performance. This is about $600
more per box as he has it configured with 1gb ram and Dual video card.

My question is that is this really that much of a difference from a
dimension P4 3.2ghz with a single drive and 1 gb ram. Does the
Precision really offer $600/per box of benefit while using VS2005 and
SQL2000 on the box?

Thanks

Ryan
Click to expand...

Dell's standard business practice seems to be to advertise a low price then
sell overpriced upgrades.

Kerry
 
1) RAID 0 is just fine, don't be scared off by it. But I doubt it'll make
that big a diff for your application anyway - you ARE setting up a
SourceSafe Server on a seperate box, w/ a RAID 1 setup, right? If not
then LOOK INTO IT. You don't want your source repositiory to ever be
unavailable. You still do need to do nightly backups, don't just rely on
the RAID 1. Store backups off site, or better yet, backup across the
net to an offsite server. {Fires do happen, and hurricans, tornados,...}.

2) Dual Video - as in SLI? Don't need that, that's for sure. Dual
Monitors tho, that's almost a must, w/ your app on one screen and the
debugger on the other. Dual 17" LCDs are very handy, and reasonably
priced these days. So, you need a dual-head video card, w/ DX-9 support
(for the future). These run $75 typically. If you're doing game
development then you don't need my advice on video, you're an expert
already, and that's a whole different ballpark.

3) A 3.0 GHz Intel or 3000+ AMD Athlon 64 should do ok; an AMD X2 would be
better, and should give a good 2-3 years of life. An Intel D820 is about
$95 less, but that will get used up in motherboard+memory+video extra
cost, I'd stick w/ an X2 +3800 system for about the same cost (w/ DDR+AGP
vs. DDR2+PCIx16). Go for a full 1GB of cl2.5 memory. [You can save a few
dollars w/ a socket 754 AMD setup, but go Athlon not Sempron, and that
dollar savings is dissappering fast as socket 939 prices continue to
fall].

Newegg and it's like are good sources for parts if you want to build your
own. Dell's reputation has taken a hit lately, and their systems are
basically "comodity" products, neither bad nor very good [For all intents,
Dell is basically just Intel's retail arm, all their systems are Intel
boards w/ intel chips]. The biggest benifit of getting a Dell is the
software bundle, which would cost you $150 at least - Dell gets it for
about $10. But if you own XP licenses already why repay, just transfer
them (if they're not OEM). If you're an MSDN subscriber then you've
already paid for all that stuff, it's on those disks somewhere!.

Have you looked at ABS Computers? They are a pretty good outfit IF you're
a computer person and not a novice. Their tech support is good, again if
you're a reasonablly knowledgable person - a novice would probably find
them to be impatient and rude, which is what you'll get from Dell tech
support no matter what.
 
My question is that is this really that much of a difference from a
dimension P4 3.2ghz with a single drive and 1 gb ram. Does the
Precision really offer $600/per box of benefit while using VS2005 and
SQL2000 on the box?
Click to expand...

following up, the "Precision" line is Dell's "workstation" line, which is
why they're more bucks. I'm not surprised the salesman reccomended it,
they like to recommend their Precision line to their engineering
customers. Would a Dimension works just as well? Yup.


By The Way, if you're shopping Dell, try BOTH the "Dell Home" and the
"Dell Small Business" sites. They are seperate marketing arms of Dell,
and offer different deals at different times. Check both before deciding
which has the best offer for you (this week).
 
This isn't an ad or anything...but I work for Insight (Insight.com) and
we are an international permier IT solutions provider. We have
extensive resources available to answer/validate your questions. The
poster above did a great job. Where we can add additional value is
providing our lab integration services (if you like) and to work with
the OEM to get special pricing for your deployment. As you know, never
pay list price.

I am available at dbrooks at insight.com or brooksdavid at gmail.com.

I have server specialists who can assist with any further questions.

Thanks
Dave
 
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