Just to revive a dead horse,
Anyone know if Dell Dimension BIOS supports APIC. Also, does it allow you to disable IRQ sharing between PCI slots and assign IRQ’s manually.
That’s an important consideration when using Digum cards. A lot of cheaper motherboards are lacking in this area.
NOTE: Whether you have it working or not is NOT what I’m asking. It will probably work but without all the above BIOS support there is the potential for problems under the right set of circumstances
After reading this whole thread, and all the arguments, I’m left wondering what the best solution is. While I would have a tendency to lean towards a cheaper configuration. I am wondering exactly how much more expensive mustardman’s system would be.
Mustardman, could you post an example configuration, and what the estimated cost would be?
Also, would there be some way to setup an “on failure” event, that would add the needed reliability. E.G. If one system went down, things would be routed to a second system? or could you cluster two computers?
While you would double-the costs in doing this, you’re still offering a relatively cheap solution (under $1k in eq). The redundancy makes up for the dependability, while still keeping the costs low.
I can’t help but think about Google in this discussion. At any given time, only 80% of google’s systems are functioning. They use the model of cheap systems, cheap componants, and heavy redundancy. You get 100% reliability from Google, but they still use cheap components. It seems a scaled down version of this should work even for small businesses.
On another note the company I work for uses Nortel/Cisco etc. We have had our phone system go out 4 times in the last 6 months for a day at a time. This has been a problem with the phone company (line problems). While I am sure this impacted our bottom line, it was not devestating. Is it really the end of the world if phone lines go down for a day for a 5-10 person business? We employ around 100.
I’m glad you asked. I am finalizing a quote right now for a 6x24 system. That is 6 PSTN lines, 24 extensions. Costs vary greatly depending on the phones used. This environment REQUIRES no more than 1 day of downtime. That in and of itself would be devastating for them but that is the ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM they could live with.
My solution for them is as follows.
Dell PowerEdge 1800
Raid 1 Hard Drives
Redundant power supply
single Xeon 2.8Ghz
512MB
3 years next business day parts and labour
Costs about $1300US on their website right now.
You might save a few $$'s by going with a Supermicro server instead. Same quality and features but your not paying for the name. If YOU think the customer will feel better about YOUR solution if you go with Dell then it’s probably worth the extra few $$'s.
2xDigium TDM03B cards
costs about $264US each
Phones (20 mid range, 4 executive)
I like the new Aastra 9133i for a SOLID midrange business phone
costs about $160USx20 (includes power)
Aastra 480i
New firmware just released Monday which adds the remaining few features that most people want.
costs about $230US x 4
PoE adapters
$20x4
You might be able to shave a few bucks off the above prices by shopping around.
Would a Dell Dimension that costs less than 1/3rd the price of the PowerEdge do the same job?
MAYBE
Would I sell them a Dell Dimension solution or something equally low end because they want to cheap out and the guys brothers uncle who builds computers in his basement says that is what they should do.
HELL NO!
Even if they would take their business elsewhere otherwise?
YES! The lost business is better than the inevitable headache and damage to my reputation. Chances are they will be back anyways once they get burned by going that route.
What about 2 Dell Dimensions? One as a hot standby or for spare parts.
NO!
It provides some measure of offline redundancy but does not address long term reliability. Does not do much to instill confidence in the customers mind either which is probably the most important consideration. At that point the cost advantage is eroding anyways. Why not just get the Cadillac and be done with it.
Why expensive server stuff?
Server boards are designed and built completely different than mass market consumer boards. The key point is that reliability is primary and price is secondary. This is more inline with the requirements for a business phone system. Whether the decision maker at the company thinks so or not (that’s where salesmanship comes in). In consumer boards it’s the exact opposite. Feature wise, server boards tend to have additional features to improve reliability that you NEVER find in consumer boards. My favorite is the watchdog timer. Software continually tickles it and if that stops happening (hardware lockup, system crash etc.) then you can configure the board to automatically reboot. Remember what happened to the Mars Rover? Same deal with server power supplies. There are many ways to cheap out on power supplies and you can bet that the chinese are doing pretty much all of them on the consumer desktop stuff. Every one of them can be mathematically shown to reduce reliability and/or expected life. Better cooling design on server cases in general with more fans. Raid 1 and redundant power supply is there for obvious reasons.
El Cheap computer guys come and go. The expensive guys who choose quality over getting business based on price are the ones that get the repeat business and referrals. Just my opinion.
I just want to revive this thread to see how you Dell Dimension guys are doing. Please be honest.
Things have changed in my philosophy with the the growing maturity of Astlinux. I can now put together a PBX using hardware that is almost as cheap as the cheap Dimension stuff using highly reliable hardware. The trade off is that I am using compact flash instead of Raid hard drives. It simplifies everything, makes it all more reliable, and reduces power requirements so I can spend more on quality and use a lower rated supply. By design, Astlinux runs read only on the Compact Flash so power failures or whatever will not corrupt the software so no need for a UPS. I can put together the hardware for around $500 not including Telecom cards. I exclusively use the new Sangoma cards with hardware echo cancellation because the quality is more consistently higher and zero echo problems. The software echo cancellation is just not good enough a lot of the time.
I pretty much exclusively use Aastra 9133i and 480i phones. The firmware has come a long way and they are IMHO the best mix of business quality and features and price.
Mustardman: so what is the price difference between your new preferred setup and the original setup you posted?
Also, are there any “medium-level” components which you might substitute in an effort to drive down the price some if the customer seems hesitant? Or do you run with a high markup and just slim that mark-up down to get the customer to bite? 
Undrhil
how well do you find that astlinux scales? i know that it excels on minimal hardware, but how well would it run on large servers (dell 2850’s, to be specific)??? i’m not sure the system would have the drivers required, necessarily, but was curious as to your experiences.
i also agree with you on the sangoma issue - in my admittedly short experience with sangoma, i have been very pleased with the quality and functionality of their product, and just switching to the a104d from a TE410p eliminated almost every one of our issues with NO tweaking required…
I expect telecom margins so none of that 5-10% margin crap common in the computer world. If I’m not making 25% minimum then I will be hesitant to do it.
With this new configuration I can deliver a VERY high quality product with Voicemail for less than a Key system with voicemail. It has a lot of features key systems don’t as well.
The main decider is if they want voicemail as a minimum. If not then a Key system still makes more sense. If they want voicemail then this starts to look like a better solution.