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Going Deep Inside Xserve Apple Drive Modules

Posted by kdawson on from the stop-thinking-like-a-user dept.

adamengst writes "If you've had an Xserve drive fail, you may have considered saving some money by putting a replacement drive inside its Apple Drive Module. That may be a false economy, though. TidBITS explains why, while pinning Apple down on exactly what goes into Apple Drive Modules and why they cost so much more than bare retail drives."

1 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. Re:name brand stuff has better support by raddan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah, but the kicker is, sometimes the support still sucks. E.g., we have (er, HAD; Apple pissed me off to the point that I literally have a stack of Xserves that can turn to dust for all I care) a bunch of Xserves and Xserve RAIDs that we used for various tasks, mostly Mac-related.

    One day, the RAID Admin tool notifies me via email that I have a failing disk in an array. OK, no problem, call Apple. We're paying for support, you know.

    The guy on the phone was friendly, and said the disk was on its way. The next morning, I have a package waiting for me when I get in. It's a drive module, yay! I go into the server room, yank the failed module (conveniently designated by a red light) and insert the new one. RAID Admin proceeds to tell me that there was an unexpected error. Huh? I try again. Same thing. No additional information, just "unexpected error".

    I call Apple back, and explain the problem, they run me through some GUI diagnostics, and in the end, cannot solve the problem. I tell them to hold off on sending me another disk just yet.

    After trawling the Apple forums, I find out, hey, I can get all of the diagnostics and logs from the CLI, too. They're way more verbose. Verdict: Apple sent me a disk of the wrong capacity-- the ones in my RAID are 74.5 GB and this one is 73.x or something. Of course, they're _supposed_ to know exactly what kind of disks I have; that's the whole point of the service. Anyway, it eventually gets sorted out, but after the RAID sat there, operating without a hot spare for about a week.

    Now, if this were the end of it, I would be forgiving of Apple. But I've had other problems. We had a CD reader fail in an Xserve. The Apple on-site person came out for this one. When he left (without checking in with me, of course), it still DID NOT WORK. This is despite the fact that I set him up with a workbench, full complement of tools, power, keyboard, and monitor to test with. The problem? He never bothered to plug the new CD drive into the machine. This is shoddy service. MINIMALLY, you test the part you just replaced, right?

    But the icing on the cake was when a controller module in our Xserve RAID failed. I call Apple and they overnight a part. When I open the box, I have... a CD-ROM drive? I call Apple and say, hey, you sent me the wrong part. The support guy went so far as to call me a liar on the phone. He said that such a mix up was "impossible". He was convinced that I was going to return the box with a CD-ROM drive in it, and keep the shiny new controller that they sent me. It wasn't until I faxed them photocopies of the accompanying paperwork that they would believe me that it was their error, and even then, they CHARGED me for a SECOND part! It took our A/P department about a month to sort that out.

    So fuck you very much Apple. Fucking rot in hell.

    (And yes, I typed this message on an iMac. I like punishment; what can I say?)