(OT) Stable Hardware with long availability

[Net Llama!]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Bill Campbell wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 30, 2007, Net Llama! wrote:
>> On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Bill Campbell wrote:
>>> Does anybody have any recommendations for hardware, main boards, CPUs, NICs
>>> in particular, that's reliable, and there is some guarantee that it will be
>>> available for extended periods of time?
>>>
>>> It doesn't have to be the Latest & Greatest technology as we want to use it
>>> in Linux boxes for the SMB market that will be doing normal Internet
>>> services, e-mail, web, firewall, ... that probably wouldn't tax a 1GhZ
>>> Pentium processor, much less the high performance hardware commonly
>>> available today.
>>>
>>> We want to be able to do software updates from binary packages without
>>> having to worry about hardware compatibility issues (e.g.  the ``gmp'' math
>>> package, used by amavisd-new, compiled on Intel gives invalid instructions
>>> on AMD -- or perhaps vice-versa).
>>>
>>> I think there has to be some source of hardware of this type, if only for
>>> systems used in applications where entire systems need to be certified as a
>>> package (e.g. medical, aviation, etc.), and they can't be dealing with new
>>> CPUs and main boards every six months.
>>
>> Just about any Tier 1 vendor (Dell, HP, IBM, etc) can provide 10+ years of
>> support on their HW asuming that you are purchasing in very high volumes
>> (where high means thousands of units).  Beyond that, I suspect that you're
>> out of luck here.
>
> The issue isn't so much support as the ability to purchase the
> same equipment over extended periods of time, without having to
> pay TEMPEST prices (the Legal Looters may pay $600 for toilet
> seats to their political supporters, but non-parasites can't :-).

Right.  However, support means providing the same equipment over an 
extended period of time.


-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonni J Friedman                        netllama at linux-sxs.org
LlamaLand				http://netllama.linux-sxs.org