Perhaps Monarch builds decent workstations, however their servers are complete crap. I made the huge mistake of purchasing 6 1U servers off of their website from them a year ago. What a nightmare.
First they sat on the order for 2 weeks and did nothing. When I called to inquire what was going on they told me that they had *never* built the configuration that their website allowed me to order before, and it wasn't going to be possible. Their 'solution' to this problem was to tell me that i'd have to pay $3k more per server to get an equivalent configuration that they could build. I told them, no thanks, i'll take my business elsewhere, and suddenly they caved.
Wait another 2 weeks without any signs of progress, at which point they tell me that they're having manufacturing delays, and that it would be another week at the most, and that they'd overnight me the hardware. 10 days pass with no updates and no servers. I call and the sales drone tells me that they're having supply chain problems, and that he'll 'upgrade' me for free to a 2U server with the same comonents but I'd have to pay $1k more per server. I tell him no, cancel my order, i've had enough of this bait & switch crap. They offer to throw in 2 extra 145GB SCSI drives per server if I pay $500/server more, and I agree.
Finally the servers arrive, and of the 6 only one boots at all (with RH9 pre-loaded). The others can't find a boot device. So I figure i'll just reload them, because I don't really want RH9 anyway (I needed RHEL3). I can't install RHEL3, as the Adaptec SCSI controller keeps getting bizarre bus timeouts & resets. I call Monarch's tech suppt to ask WTF? For starters, getting in touch with a human is very difficult. Much of the time I got dumped to vmail and no one ever returned my calls. When I did get a human they were always giving me this story about how there's only one Linux tech on staff and he was either at lunch, or in a meeting, or on the phone with another customer. I demand to talk to a manager, and i'm promised that one will call me the same day. While I'm waiting (with my project now nearly a month behind schedule) I start poking around inside the boxes, and I figure I'll see if Adaptec has any ideas.
I submit a support request to Adaptec, and I get a call from them 30 minutes later from someone who had many Linux clues. After some troubleshooting we determined that the 64bit PCI slot on the mobo in these servers can't handle the Adaptec SCSI controller (and Adaptec points this out in the errata which Monarch apparently failed to read). I had to move the SCSI controller to a 32 bit PCI slot, which allowed me load RHEL3 without a problem.
A manager from Monarch did call me back later that day, and was completely useless. I explained how Adaptec figured out the problem, and that this was clearly a failing of Monarch, and that I wanted a refund for selling me servers which couldn't run at their full capacity. Monarch refused to give an inch, and insisted that they had 'burnt in' the servers with RH9 in their factory, and something had to have broken during shipping. I kept pointing out the Adaptec errata to this idiot, and he just kept making excuses. (incidentally, the one server that did boot RH9 had its SCSI card in the 32 bit slot). All Monarch would offer was for me to ship the servers back to them for 'repairs'.
Never buy servers from Monarch. They are clueless, bumbling idiots.
I worked for UPS about 3 years ago, in the ECR TSC. I wrote up a very detailed proposal for deploying a single Linux workstation for handling intradepartmental communications & archiving documents. It got shot down for 1 reason: * Linux is not an approved OS
My management refused to even consider the merits of the proposal as they feared the repurcussions of deviating from the 'UPS way'.
Sorry, that's not the case. I used to work for UPS, and *ALL* of their apps are developed inhouse. The company is one of the largest MS whores around, and drinks the MS anti-Linux FUD as if its religion. About 3 years ago they were solidly a NT4 (workstation & server) company, and were avidly doing their best to phase all other 'legacy' OS's (Novell, OS/2, SunOS).
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Actually, ATI is the bigger company from a man power standpoint.
Perhaps Monarch builds decent workstations, however their servers are complete crap. I made the huge mistake of purchasing 6 1U servers off of their website from them a year ago. What a nightmare.
First they sat on the order for 2 weeks and did nothing. When I called to inquire what was going on they told me that they had *never* built the configuration that their website allowed me to order before, and it wasn't going to be possible. Their 'solution' to this problem was to tell me that i'd have to pay $3k more per server to get an equivalent configuration that they could build. I told them, no thanks, i'll take my business elsewhere, and suddenly they caved.
Wait another 2 weeks without any signs of progress, at which point they tell me that they're having manufacturing delays, and that it would be another week at the most, and that they'd overnight me the hardware. 10 days pass with no updates and no servers. I call and the sales drone tells me that they're having supply chain problems, and that he'll 'upgrade' me for free to a 2U server with the same comonents but I'd have to pay $1k more per server. I tell him no, cancel my order, i've had enough of this bait & switch crap. They offer to throw in 2 extra 145GB SCSI drives per server if I pay $500/server more, and I agree.
Finally the servers arrive, and of the 6 only one boots at all (with RH9 pre-loaded). The others can't find a boot device. So I figure i'll just reload them, because I don't really want RH9 anyway (I needed RHEL3). I can't install RHEL3, as the Adaptec SCSI controller keeps getting bizarre bus timeouts & resets. I call Monarch's tech suppt to ask WTF? For starters, getting in touch with a human is very difficult. Much of the time I got dumped to vmail and no one ever returned my calls. When I did get a human they were always giving me this story about how there's only one Linux tech on staff and he was either at lunch, or in a meeting, or on the phone with another customer. I demand to talk to a manager, and i'm promised that one will call me the same day. While I'm waiting (with my project now nearly a month behind schedule) I start poking around inside the boxes, and I figure I'll see if Adaptec has any ideas.
I submit a support request to Adaptec, and I get a call from them 30 minutes later from someone who had many Linux clues. After some troubleshooting we determined that the 64bit PCI slot on the mobo in these servers can't handle the Adaptec SCSI controller (and Adaptec points this out in the errata which Monarch apparently failed to read). I had to move the SCSI controller to a 32 bit PCI slot, which allowed me load RHEL3 without a problem.
A manager from Monarch did call me back later that day, and was completely useless. I explained how Adaptec figured out the problem, and that this was clearly a failing of Monarch, and that I wanted a refund for selling me servers which couldn't run at their full capacity. Monarch refused to give an inch, and insisted that they had 'burnt in' the servers with RH9 in their factory, and something had to have broken during shipping. I kept pointing out the Adaptec errata to this idiot, and he just kept making excuses. (incidentally, the one server that did boot RH9 had its SCSI card in the 32 bit slot). All Monarch would offer was for me to ship the servers back to them for 'repairs'.
Never buy servers from Monarch. They are clueless, bumbling idiots.
NVIDIA's Quadro line of cards is meant for workstations (instead of consumer/gaming) purposes.
Isn't SCO's nework infrastructure in Utah, not Santa Cruz?
I worked for UPS about 3 years ago, in the ECR TSC. I wrote up a very detailed proposal for deploying a single Linux workstation for handling intradepartmental communications & archiving documents. It got shot down for 1 reason:
* Linux is not an approved OS
My management refused to even consider the merits of the proposal as they feared the repurcussions of deviating from the 'UPS way'.
Sorry, that's not the case. I used to work for UPS, and *ALL* of their apps are developed inhouse. The company is one of the largest MS whores around, and drinks the MS anti-Linux FUD as if its religion. About 3 years ago they were solidly a NT4 (workstation & server) company, and were avidly doing their best to phase all other 'legacy' OS's (Novell, OS/2, SunOS).
Speaking of things that need to be corrected, check this out, before Caldera yanked it off their page:
p ap er.pdf
http://linux-sxs.org/~netllama/unitedlinuxwhite
Caldera eDesktop 2.4 comes standard with GRUB, although LILO is still an available option for old skoolers.