rick@nyit.UUCP (Rick Ace) (08/15/86)
This is a followup to a previous query in net.periphs to sites
operating Fujitsu Eagle disk hardware on Emulex controllers.
First, a big "thank you" to the three people who replied.
Don Speck (cit-vax!mangler) maintains his hardware via a board-
swapping isolation approach, followed by shopping for price
quotes from hardware vendors for the failing components.
As Don admits, "It works best when you have lots."
Henry Spencer (utzoo!henry) and Richard Stevens (hsi!stevens)
said that their sites have service contracts for their equipment.
They have been blessed with much fortune (as is typical for
Emulex/Eagle owners) in that they never had to place a service
call.
The NYIT Computer Graphics Lab has 5 Eagles, 4 SC780 controllers,
and 1 SC750 controller. One of the Eagles developed a problem,
which was ultimately cured by replacing its HDA. On another
occasion, a board in one SC780 malfunctioned, causing 4.2bsd to
report lots of disk errors (DCK, ECH, HCE, others). Our gear is
maintained by Digital Field Service. Presumably because the local
DEC office does not have many other Emulex/Eagle customers on contract,
there can sometimes be a delay of a day or two in rounding up a set
of spares to bring on-site for board-swapping fault isolation.
Observations/Conclusions:
Reliability of Emulex/Eagle hardware ranges from good to excellent
(as all of you who own it can agree). If and when you do require
maintenance, you may likely discover that it will take a bit longer
to repair your third-party stuff than it would, say, for an RM05 or
RA81. If uptime is really critical, you might want to look into
purchasing some spares of your own to keep on site; if you have a
service contract, sit down with the service manager and try to get
an accurate appraisal of the company's ability to respond quickly to
your downtime problems *before* they happen.
-----
Rick Ace
Computer Graphics Laboratory
New York Institute of Technology
Old Westbury, NY 11568
(516) 686-7644
{decvax,seismo}!philabs!nyit!rick