Opened a sales enquiry with ServerHub on December 20th regarding a server. During the sales chat had asked which RAID card would be delivered with the server as was told the company used LSI 9261s.
Was told on the 23rd with regards to delivery that "Typically with custom configuration it takes 2 to 3 business days.".
Payment was made on December 24th for the server.
Opened a ticket on the 27th to add a few notes to the order regarding OS installation as OS installation was selected during the order. Was told that the server was still a few days away.
Opened a ticket on the 31st to ask for an expected turn up date on the server as wanted to allocate some time setting it up. I made it clear I understood it was the holidays so slippages in delivery could occur. Was told the parts were due in on the day and the server would be delivered either that day or the next.
The server was delivered two days later on the 2nd without an OS installed. Upon inspecting the configuration it was noted the server had a re-flashed IBM M5014 which differs in specs to the 9261 (half the cache). I opened a ticket on the 3rd informing that this was the case. Was told that they get these cards in bulk and it was the first card they pulled; however they could get the correct card installed.
I confirmed I was happy for the card to be replaced as the server was not yet usable as they had not allocated an IP range to the server that was requested during the order process. The ticket was updated a few hours later to say that the RAID card was not in stock and they would have to order it in. I was informed they could increase the bandwidth allocation and offer a credit on my next bill if I took the server as is.
I informed them that I would take the current RAID card as I was not really prepared to wait as the server setup had already extended past the time I anticipated.
Two later the IP ranges were routed to the server (4th Jan) so I started to set it up. Upon configuring the server I performed a number of post config checks and benchmarks to ensure everything was in order. I noticed that sequential writes were about half of what they should have been for the setup ordered.
I then tried a few various things:
Configuring my own RAID array (as it had been delivered with RAID 10 configured on the card) Checking the BBU was present, healthy and not on a learning cycle Adjusting write-back to write-through and making other changes in terms of block size and FS alignment.
All results led to the same poor sequential write performance.
Opened a ticket on the same day (4th Jan) informing of the poor write performance. Support asked me for expected write speeds. I agreed to re-check configurations via IPMI however in doing so the server became stuck at the RAID BIOS. Upon rebooting the server the IPMI then decided to lock out and I did not have permission to reset the IKVM unit under my user so informed them via ticket. I said I believed the RAID card to be faulty and would leave the server for them to diagnose and would like them to install the originally specified RAID card as I suspected the current card to be faulty.
They replied the same day (4th Jan) that they would look into it.
I replied on the ticket two days later (6th Jan) Asking where I stood with this as there had been no reply.
I received a reply asking if I could chat via Skype. I spoke with them via Skype and they agreed to order the requested RAID card and it would be arriving in a few days. They added this note to the ticket itself.
I opened a ticket on the 9th to check if the card had been delivered to which there was no reply.
24 hours later (today) I added to the ticket again asking for an update. We are now approaching 8 hours past that point (during their normal business hours) and still no reply.
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