Cephren
04-20-2002, 06:20 AM
Bye Bye Cobalt - Finally we have decided to move on and abandon Cobalt once and for all. Thank GOD! these servers are driving all the admins here nuts from day one for the last 2 years.
Sure we and the blue pizza boxes had good times and bad times...but counting it all out, weve had more bad than good.
To cut this story short, lets start with just some of the problems weve encountered. (welcome to the history of our company with Cobalt servers - a fascinating timeline of pleasure)
1. We have this theory that one in 30 cobalts shipped has hardware problems or will sucumb to hardware problems within 3 months of service. (Heck my ancient crappy Packad Bell P1 166mhz still works today)
2. Hey Cobalt once put on their website for the description that the Raq4 came with MYSQL. After ordering a whole bunch, we dont find it there. Other than being released at PKGmaster.
Its true..........they took it off once we bought the servers.
3. 450 mhz for the raq4 was sure fast......yeah 2-3 years ago....
Cobalt states" Intel Based Processor"...... ok...... the true meaning of that is "We like to cut costs and give you a K6-2 450 which is cheaper than Intel. Gee why dont they just say K6-2 450 on the product documentation.
4. The server supports up to 250 website. Sure sure sure.......
250 websites with like 5 pages each with nothing enabled - no cgi, no ssi, nothing enabled and no visitors. Do a force load test on one of these server and you can actually count the time to failure.... 5 4 3 2 1 all sites gone down the drain. They make great for hosting static websites....but nowadays everything is dynamic.
5. Orders a Cobalt Axxent Velociraptor. Next thing we know, Cobalt sells the rights to it and there is no more support for them.
Oh well at least theres a 10 gb hard drive we can use from it.
Incase one of the cases for a raq breaks we can always use the velociraptors case since its the same. Wow spare parts.
6. Cobalt offers XTR! cool we though, so we order a whole bunch...and within 3 months they were all recalled back. That was certainly misearble seeing some of them take 6 hours just to do a reboot. What a waste of money! they were so expensive too. Then again, for every XTR we purchased, Cobalt gave us 2 raqs instead of refunding the money.. is this some silly trick?
7. Cobalt re-releases XTR again - we are too scared to purchase anymore from them.
8. Hackers find ways to compromise Raqs. Even with all the patches and stuff they easily get in. No surprise. Cobalt either comes out with patches too late or releases patches that mess up a server or open other holes.
9. Cobalt calls the servers "easy to setup". Sure it was easy to setup, stick it intop a rack, power it on and tada! but when something happens, its not fun fixing them.
ie. control panel dies.
10. what kind of backup and restore util is that???????????? must be planned out by the janitor at Cobalt during his coffee break. Weve never encountered anything as bad as that.
I think its Cobalt's way of telling us to spend couple thousand dollars to buy Arkeia and Veritas.
Conclusions
Sure we learned alot from these Mickey Mouse servers.
These servers forced us all to learn the hard way.
After administrering one of these for a while, everyone gets a crash course in Linux/Apache and Cobalt.
We also learned to hug them and give them emotional support every once and then or else they will miserably die on you. (Remember the tamagoutchi fad) So remember to sit quietly once and now and talk to each cobalt server.
Off we go to Dell Poweredge with Plesk! woohooo
Sure we and the blue pizza boxes had good times and bad times...but counting it all out, weve had more bad than good.
To cut this story short, lets start with just some of the problems weve encountered. (welcome to the history of our company with Cobalt servers - a fascinating timeline of pleasure)
1. We have this theory that one in 30 cobalts shipped has hardware problems or will sucumb to hardware problems within 3 months of service. (Heck my ancient crappy Packad Bell P1 166mhz still works today)
2. Hey Cobalt once put on their website for the description that the Raq4 came with MYSQL. After ordering a whole bunch, we dont find it there. Other than being released at PKGmaster.
Its true..........they took it off once we bought the servers.
3. 450 mhz for the raq4 was sure fast......yeah 2-3 years ago....
Cobalt states" Intel Based Processor"...... ok...... the true meaning of that is "We like to cut costs and give you a K6-2 450 which is cheaper than Intel. Gee why dont they just say K6-2 450 on the product documentation.
4. The server supports up to 250 website. Sure sure sure.......
250 websites with like 5 pages each with nothing enabled - no cgi, no ssi, nothing enabled and no visitors. Do a force load test on one of these server and you can actually count the time to failure.... 5 4 3 2 1 all sites gone down the drain. They make great for hosting static websites....but nowadays everything is dynamic.
5. Orders a Cobalt Axxent Velociraptor. Next thing we know, Cobalt sells the rights to it and there is no more support for them.
Oh well at least theres a 10 gb hard drive we can use from it.
Incase one of the cases for a raq breaks we can always use the velociraptors case since its the same. Wow spare parts.
6. Cobalt offers XTR! cool we though, so we order a whole bunch...and within 3 months they were all recalled back. That was certainly misearble seeing some of them take 6 hours just to do a reboot. What a waste of money! they were so expensive too. Then again, for every XTR we purchased, Cobalt gave us 2 raqs instead of refunding the money.. is this some silly trick?
7. Cobalt re-releases XTR again - we are too scared to purchase anymore from them.
8. Hackers find ways to compromise Raqs. Even with all the patches and stuff they easily get in. No surprise. Cobalt either comes out with patches too late or releases patches that mess up a server or open other holes.
9. Cobalt calls the servers "easy to setup". Sure it was easy to setup, stick it intop a rack, power it on and tada! but when something happens, its not fun fixing them.
ie. control panel dies.
10. what kind of backup and restore util is that???????????? must be planned out by the janitor at Cobalt during his coffee break. Weve never encountered anything as bad as that.
I think its Cobalt's way of telling us to spend couple thousand dollars to buy Arkeia and Veritas.
Conclusions
Sure we learned alot from these Mickey Mouse servers.
These servers forced us all to learn the hard way.
After administrering one of these for a while, everyone gets a crash course in Linux/Apache and Cobalt.
We also learned to hug them and give them emotional support every once and then or else they will miserably die on you. (Remember the tamagoutchi fad) So remember to sit quietly once and now and talk to each cobalt server.
Off we go to Dell Poweredge with Plesk! woohooo