Comments on: Why do DIMM cards fail so often in servers http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/why-do-dimm-cards-fail-so-often-in-servers/ Tue, 21 May 2013 20:11:10 +0000 hourly 1 By: flame http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/why-do-dimm-cards-fail-so-often-in-servers/#comment-56708 flame Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:28:59 +0000 #comment-56708 Thank you for the clarification, It makes more sense to me now. I was thinking about this on the way to work, as integrated circuits in general are becoming more powerful, they are also becoming more fragile. Perhaps RAM chips are starting to demonstrate the physical limitations of their manufacturing process. I’d imagine that CPU’s and RAM both are made on rather densely populated dies, with extremely narrow connections. CPU’s get a fan at least. Your question has caused me to look into the chip manufacturing industry, I’m learning a lot!
Thanks!
-Flame

]]> By: jim4522 http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/why-do-dimm-cards-fail-so-often-in-servers/#comment-56697 jim4522 Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:14:03 +0000 #comment-56697 Flame, when I say that the current disks are failing every “500 months of server use”, that is not the same as saying they fail every five hundred months. In a facility that has 10,000 servers that facility experiences 10,000 server months each month. And in that facility that means 20 diskdrives on average will need to be replaced if they are IBM quality diskdrives. In four years that facvilty will experience 480,000 server months of use and will experience the replacement of 960 again if they are IBM quality disdrives. But if those servers are from HP those 480,000 server months would produce 3,117 disk replacements because HP drives experience a diskdrive failure every 154 server months.
You might be interested in the following replacement rates in “server use months”:
Device IBM HP Dell Sun Fujitsu
Sys BD 1291 742 895 727 1,427
Memory 407 255 1,044 163 150
Power Sup 3,874 1,293 1,044 283 2,855
Disk 500 154 261 232 317
CPU 2,113 10,024 6,267 1,490 2,855
HBA 2,213 8,019 2,089 2,981 571

The best composite server (Fujitsu sysy bd, Dell Memory, IBM power supply, IBM disk drive, HP CPU, HP HBA) would have 61% less failure then the best existing server.

If users measured the “Maintenance Rates” of servers and the “Replacement Rates” of the six major components that constitute 90+% of all failures the vendors would immediately respond by making much more reliable servers and components. And the cost of maintenance which is higher than either cooling and power cost would decrease substantially. Jim4522

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