Dell used to pride themselves on shipping, if not “pretty” servers, then at least non-ugly ones. They’re well-known for their steely-grey faceplates which over the years have served well to obscure the patent ugliness of multiple drive bays, optical disk bays, power buttons and other assorted server miscellania. We recently ordered a couple of PowerEdge 2950s from them at work and, when making the selections on-line, I was presented with the following nice-not-ugly picture of the server:
All went well in the ordering process. However, I failed to notice the following option when placing our order:
Our servers arrived and I was quite startled to find that, instead of a pleasantly disarming gray, our servers are now displaying two rows of ungainly disk bays and what seems like miles of ugly matte black finish. Gah.
(NOTE: That’s not my server room, nor did I snap that picture, nor is that a 2950 [I think]. It looks very similar, but not quite identical to, the 2950; picture pulled from here.)
I know that someone in Dell probably thought “Hey, amortize a potential $10 savings across the thousands and thousands of servers we sell and that’s some serious cost-savings!”, but the net effect is that they’ve made their $7,000 server seem cheap, home-brewed, unprofessional and just plain homely. They’re willing to sink their excellent visual rep in the corporate data center for a $10 piece of plastic. Heads should roll!
Dell: We’ll Sell You Ugly Servers, Unless You Pay Us Not To
