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Hi,
I just want to get a quick take on what people think about the
reliability of the F50s.

We just bought one and we're planning on putting some fairly important
stuff running on it and want to know what kind of reliability we can
expect. We bought this one off ebay. The software (CMVC!*) has been
running reliably on a little ol' 43P for over 5 years, but I'm tired of
putting up with the poor perormance. The F50's a big step up - quad CPUs
and 3GB memory. I'm not crazy about buying a second F50 for a cold
spare but plan on being able to fall back on the 43P with suitable
savevg's just in case.

We run a lot of Netfinity 4500R's and have found them to have a common
problem with VRM/Motherboard failures. I just want to see if there's any
such common failure with the F50 and would appreciate any feedback along
those lines.

*Yeah, I know CMVC isn't supported anymore, but the old "if it ain't
broke don't fix it" applies, and we've not yet found anything else that
works as well for our development model and isn't an overpriced pile of
crap.

Thanks!
John

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On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 01:40:11 GMT, JohnM
<jmadd_NOFREAKINGSPAM@austin.rr.com> wrote:

>Hi,
>I just want to get a quick take on what people think about the
>reliability of the F50s.
>
>We just bought one and we're planning on putting some fairly important
>stuff running on it and want to know what kind of reliability we can
>expect. We bought this one off ebay. The software (CMVC!*) has been
>running reliably on a little ol' 43P for over 5 years, but I'm tired of
>putting up with the poor perormance. The F50's a big step up - quad CPUs
>and 3GB memory. I'm not crazy about buying a second F50 for a cold
>spare but plan on being able to fall back on the 43P with suitable
>savevg's just in case.
>
>We run a lot of Netfinity 4500R's and have found them to have a common
>problem with VRM/Motherboard failures. I just want to see if there's any
>such common failure with the F50 and would appreciate any feedback along
>those lines.
>
>*Yeah, I know CMVC isn't supported anymore, but the old "if it ain't
>broke don't fix it" applies, and we've not yet found anything else that
>works as well for our development model and isn't an overpriced pile of
>crap.
>
>Thanks!
>John

We bought our F50 back in 1998 and it's still being used as main
database server (Oracle8i) for our Accounts and Purchasing Depts.
Later on we did some updrades from 1 CPU/512M RAM to 4CPU/2G RAM, put
extra ULTRA3 controllers and 18 disk spindles into it (be careful with
SCSI cables if installing 6-packs yourself, they can be damaged fairly
easily). We upgraded AIX as well from 4.2.1 to 4.3.3 ML11.
As of now the machine works fine, NEVER had crashes since 1998, uptime
is 936 days as of today (after changing the network card to Gigabit
Ethernet and rebooting), the only problem we had is SCSI disks failed
couple of times but since they're all mirrored - we just replaced and
re-mirrored them.

Alex

Hello World,

JohnM <jmadd_NOFREAKINGSPAM@austin.rr.com> wrote in message news:<%pzkd.7729$SS3.5793@fe2.texas.rr.com>...
> Hi,
> I just want to get a quick take on what people think about the
> reliability of the F50s.

I think the F50 is my all-time favorite RS/6000. Used them for SP
Control workstations, L*t*s D*min* servers, database servers, HACMP
clusters. They can hold a surprising amount of storage and are
generally trouble free. I'd say go for it. It'll run rings around your
43p. If you need to buy one, though, you may want to have a look at
the more recent boxen. They are coming down in price marvellously, and
have many more RAS features than the good ol' F50.

YM of course MV, always read the safety precautions, use mirrored
disks only, always wear eye protection goggles, look both ways before
crossing etc. etc. etc.

[...]

>
> Thanks!
> John

Cheers!
Menno.

In article <%pzkd.7729$SS3.5793@fe2.texas.rr.com>, JohnM <jmadd_NOFREAKINGSPAM@austin.rr.com> writes:
> Hi,
> I just want to get a quick take on what people think about the
> reliability of the F50s.


I can't say anything bad about it.
I bought ours way back in 1998 and it has served us well for all
kinds of tasks (including numbercrunching) since then.
Uptimes could be measured in years, if it weren't for
(planned or unplanned) power outages in our computing centre.
I cannot remember a single serious problem with that machine.

>
> *Yeah, I know CMVC isn't supported anymore, but the old "if it ain't
> broke don't fix it" applies, and we've not yet found anything else that
> works as well for our development model and isn't an overpriced pile of
> crap

wise move, but not very common these days.

Alex wrote:

>We bought our F50 back in 1998 and it's still being used as main
>database server (Oracle8i) for our Accounts and Purchasing Depts.
>Later on we did some updrades from 1 CPU/512M RAM to 4CPU/2G RAM, put
>extra ULTRA3 controllers and 18 disk spindles into it (be careful with
>SCSI cables if installing 6-packs yourself, they can be damaged fairly
>easily). We upgraded AIX as well from 4.2.1 to 4.3.3 ML11.
>As of now the machine works fine, NEVER had crashes since 1998, uptime
>is 936 days as of today (after changing the network card to Gigabit
>Ethernet and rebooting), the only problem we had is SCSI disks failed
>couple of times but since they're all mirrored - we just replaced and
>re-mirrored them.
>
That sounds pretty awesome Alex. Do you recall what controllers you put
in there? I put in a second 6-pack but don't have a controller for it yet.
Thanks for the feedback.
J.

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Oh, and Thanks to Menno and Michael for taking the time to reply also.

--
Remove the 'NS' from my address to reply.

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 01:58:22 GMT, JohnM
<jmadd_NOFREAKINGSPAM@austin.rr.com> wrote:

>Alex wrote:
>
>>We bought our F50 back in 1998 and it's still being used as main
>>database server (Oracle8i) for our Accounts and Purchasing Depts.
>>Later on we did some updrades from 1 CPU/512M RAM to 4CPU/2G RAM, put
>>extra ULTRA3 controllers and 18 disk spindles into it (be careful with
>>SCSI cables if installing 6-packs yourself, they can be damaged fairly
>>easily). We upgraded AIX as well from 4.2.1 to 4.3.3 ML11.
>>As of now the machine works fine, NEVER had crashes since 1998, uptime
>>is 936 days as of today (after changing the network card to Gigabit
>>Ethernet and rebooting), the only problem we had is SCSI disks failed
>>couple of times but since they're all mirrored - we just replaced and
>>re-mirrored them.
>>
>That sounds pretty awesome Alex. Do you recall what controllers you put
>in there? I put in a second 6-pack but don't have a controller for it yet.
>Thanks for the feedback.
>J.

Well, if I'll tell you that we still have a 7009-C10 (POWERPC-601),
still running with all originals parts except for memory upgrade, with
RAM modules taken from CISCO router, since 1995, and Model 390
(POWER2) bought in 1995 as well, as our test server for applying
PTFs/perl-dbi development and DNS/proxy server resopectively, the
whole RS6K line would seem a pretty stable platform.

In fact, we had more trouble with later machines, 7025-6F0 (sort of a
successor to F50?) - had to upgrade RAID controller firmware and
system firmware to prevent crashes.

As to ULTRA3 controllers we bought for F50, they are as follows:

root@dbsrv01-313-> lscfg -vp -l scsi3
DEVICE LOCATION DESCRIPTION

scsi3 20-61 Wide/Ultra-3 SCSI I/O Controller

PCI DUAL CHANNEL ULTRA3 SCSI ADAPTER:
Part Number.................09P2544
FRU Number..................09P2544
EC Level....................H10812
Manufacture ID..............A16592
Serial Number...............YL1020041655
Device Specific.(YL)........P2-I2


Regards

Alex

Alex wrote:

>Well, if I'll tell you that we still have a 7009-C10 (POWERPC-601),
>still running with all originals parts except for memory upgrade, with
>RAM modules taken from CISCO router, since 1995, and Model 390
>(POWER2) bought in 1995 as well, as our test server for applying
>PTFs/perl-dbi development and DNS/proxy server resopectively, the
>
>
Ha! You're my kind of guy, Alex.
Thanks so much for the controller info.
Best Regards, John

>In fact, we had more trouble with later machines, 7025-6F0 (sort of a
>successor to F50?) - had to upgrade RAID controller firmware and
>system firmware to prevent crashes.
>
>As to ULTRA3 controllers we bought for F50, they are as follows:
>
>root@dbsrv01-313-> lscfg -vp -l scsi3
> DEVICE LOCATION DESCRIPTION
>
> scsi3 20-61 Wide/Ultra-3 SCSI I/O Controller
>
> PCI DUAL CHANNEL ULTRA3 SCSI ADAPTER:
> Part Number.................09P2544
> FRU Number..................09P2544
> EC Level....................H10812
> Manufacture ID..............A16592
> Serial Number...............YL1020041655
> Device Specific.(YL)........P2-I2
>
>
>Regards
>
>Alex
>
>

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I'm coming to this thread late but I can attest to F50s being rock solid
beasts.

Our main patch repository runs off a F50 -- it used to be a SP control
workstation for most of its life. With the SP cluster recently retired,
it's just serving as a very handy large disk repository due to all its
internal disk capacity.

It almost never goes down since it's on an industrial UPS, and the OS
and hardware itself is stable.

Though, our IBM hardware in general is pretty reliable. Usually the hard
drive breaks after about 5-6 years of daily use and for SSA controller
cards, cache battery expiring after 3 years. Rare that anything else breaks.

Hard drive replacement accounts for perhaps 99% of our service calls for
all of our IBM AIX boxes, with the occasional unusual events like where
the first generation 6H1 PSU caught on fire or where the same 6H1 also
blew its motherboard (different event, a year earlier).

-Dan