VMware: Can’t run 64 bit guests? Read this!
Yesterday one of my former co-workers sent me an IM asking for help with VMware on a PowerEdge 1950. He had Googled for the problem and found my blog. I suppose I may be an "expert" at VMware on the PowerEdge 1950. 
Anyway, he found that when he powered on a 64 bit guest, VMware would error out complaining that he couldn't run 64 bit guests on his host. Since the guest OS "sees" the same processor as the host machine, this shouldn't happen. Fortunately, it's a simple fix.
Go into the BIOS in the server and go to CPU Features. Make sure that VT (Virtualization Technology) is enabled. It comes disabled by default on the PowerEdge 1950. Reboot the box and your 64 bit guests should boot up happily.
Musical Account Reps at Dell
I have been buying Dell gear for personal and business use since 1998 or so. Over the years I've been personally responsible for the purchase of countless Latitudes, Optiplexes, and PowerEdge servers, as well as a bunch of Dimension and Inspiron desktops. With the exception of the Toshiba Satellite I had a few years back (Dell didn't have any 17" laptops, and I didn't know enough not to buy one) and my current MacBook Pro, I've never worked on a system other than a Dell.
Dell consistently beats out IBM and HP in price. Arguably you can say that Dell's website is put together better than both - IBM's site is a maze of confusing information that never seems to get you the support that you need. HP's is very clunky but a bit better. Dell sells decent networking gear at bottom feeder (Linksys, D-Link, Netgear) prices.
If people ask me what type of system to buy, I say Dell. I've brought Dell into Rubin & Raine, VPIsystems, and Smart Carpet. I brought them into my current gig, and we've spent close to a quarter of a million dollars on gear from them.
And all of that is going to change.
Why?
There has been one thing that Dell does consistently, and that's change account reps on me. Almost on clockwork, every six months I get a new rep. And it's the most frustrating thing to have to deal with. At my current gig we're on our sixth rep in three years!
Back in January of 2007 we were forced to switch reps again. Our current rep, Emily Upton, whom I adored was "promoted" to a new business group. She was sad to see us go, and she gave me some pointers on who I could complain to to try to make the transition not happen. My account was based out of the Oklahoma City Dell call center. I ended up having several conference calls over the course of the week with the new rep's manager as well as the Regional Manager of the call center, Chris Kelleher. I was given a two hour SLA for quote turnarounds, and assurances that my account team would not transition again for a long time. I had the impression that they finally understood how bad the process is for the customer, and I had some sense that this would not happen to me again.
Yesterday, though, I was treated to this email:
Ben Ruset,
I am writing to introduce myself as your senior account manager at Dell. Along with my account team, we will be working together as your company transitions into our preferred accounts division. I will be your main point of contact and below you will find all of my contact information along with my account team.
Our main goal and objective is to develop the relationship between our companies to ensure we provide your business with the highest levels of service and support with the best value on each purchase based on volume. I look forward to working with you and members of your company to develop customized solutions to fit your company’s IT objectives. The fastest way to contact me is via email and I plan on being in touch in the next 2 weeks.
Thanks.
Uh oh. Now, this is the same canned email that I've got every time. It's always the last line that bothers me the most. "I plan on being in touch in the next 2 weeks."
No. I buy $50k worth of servers at a clip. I was my former reps biggest client. I will wager that I am this new rep's biggest client. You're not making me wait two weeks to hear from you.
I fired off a quick email from my iPhone as I was at our colo at the time. I asked what happened to Sandi, our old rep:
I do not know Sandi personally but one of two things happened. Either she got promoted and moved to a different division or she is no longer with Dell. Please let me know what you liked about dealing with Sandi and I’ll make sure to provide the best level of service.
Uh huh. I fired off an email to Sandi, her boss Kyle, and Chris Kelleher. The only person who responded was Kyle, and he neatly played the company line. I spoke with my new rep Paul, who basically told me that he was a new rep in the department and that he was voted one of the best reps over the last few months and that he wouldn't be transitioned away for "at least" a year. Ooh, reassuring.
Today I spoke with his boss. Still more of the company line. Sandi got promoted (which is good for her) and essentially I should "give them a chance." Now, you've been reading this article so far and probably wondering what the big deal is. Let me explain:
- Getting good account reps at Dell is very hard. My experience has been that the vast majority of them have been awful. I was lucky to have Emily, and Sandi turned out to be good (after I had to kick and scream to make sure I got the same level of service as I had with Emily.) I don't want to have to be stuck with some terrible rep. It's not worth it for us to have to take that chance - it's a business risk that Dell is forcing upon us.
- I threw a fit the last time this happened. I had the ear of some pretty high up executives. I thought they had understood the angst in the process. It seems they have not. The fact that I'm notified of this transition by a canned email instead of a call from my old rep is mind boggling. If I was such an "important" customer as they had said I was I would think a phone call would be in order. Like I said, I'm not upset that Sandi got promoted. I'm upset with the way this has happened.
- We deal with a 3rd party leasing company which is hard to deal with sometimes. I had to fight hard to have them let us keep Sandi as our rep because I knew of the level of service she would provide. Now I have to go through the process all over again, with some unknown guy.
- I haven't had any contact with anybody but my rep and his manager. No higher ups have contacted me. Nobody, with the exception of Kyle from my old team, has contacted me. It's as if this is not a serious problem for Dell.
One very telling thing happened the other day. I had asked the new sales rep for a quote, which to his credit I received very quickly. He called me and I was really giving him an earful about the transition. In the middle of my tirade he's like "so can I place an order for those servers?" That is the most callous thing anybody has ever said to me. I'm complaining about your company and you have the chutzpa to ask me if I'm going to drop $15k with you? Give me a break.
The musical account reps only serve to benefit Dell. They cause signifigant disruption to my company. It's an extra hassle when I trust my vendors to be solutions providers, not problem providers. I have had the same rep from CDW for three years. Why is this so hard for Dell?
I have a quote for five Dell PowerEdge 1950's in front of me. I also have a quote for 5 HP DL160's. They're coming in at the same price. Who do I want to go with?
HP.
Treat me like crap and I'll vote with my wallet. Dell stands to lose quite a bit of money over this.
I'd like to hear from other people who have gone through Musical Account Reps with Dell.
Dell Account Rep Nightmare – Update 1
I spoke with Chris, who is the Regional Sales Manager for the New York area. Essentially, I'm pretty much stuck where I am now. The idea is to give the new account team 90 days, and then from there we'll see what happens. Not to sound too cynical, but I am sure that what will happen is if this new team isn't great, in 90 days I'll get moved to another team instead of back where I wanted to be with my former rep.
I tried to impress on Dell that I wasn't going to walk away from that phone call happy unless my account moved back to where it was.
A long time customer of Dell, who is blatantly telling Dell that they are unhappy, and making a reasonable request that will solve the problem was basically told to suck it up and deal with it.
My company would never think of treating a customer like that. But even then, if one of our customers was unhappy, we'd pretty much do anything to resolve the problem.
Dell has come under a lot of fire recently. First, they took a lot of slag (rightly so) for their consumer level customer support being sub-par. They worked to improve communication between end users and Dell by monitoring blogs, starting their own blog, and proactively solving problems. (They replaced my Inspiron 700m with a XPS M1210 after the Inspiron broke three times and came back from their repair depot more broken than it had arrived there.) Their direct sale business model has apparently peaked and isn't carrying the company any more, so they're branching out to retail shops. Mike Dell is again CEO. Financial problems.
I am a huge Dell fan. I've always had good luck with the Optiplex, Latitude, and PowerEdge line of gear. The Dimensions we have are stable enough. The Inspiron laptops we have, including the E1505 that I am tying this on now, hold up somewhat well but end up looking a bit worse for wear. Our entire switching infrastructure runs on Dell switches. We have a huge VMWare farm running on really high end PowerEdge 1950's. We're now reselling Dell gear.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that we're not buying at the volume of Dell's largest accounts. But we're certainly not stingy with the revenue we're giving them now. To top it off, I'm pretty much responsible for our switch to Dell, since my co-workers all love IBM and HP gear. It amazes me that I'm getting the runaround from Dell over this.
Dell Account Rep Nightmare
My company, over the course of the last year or so, has been standardizing on Dell servers for our infrastructure projects. We've always used Dell desktops and notebooks, but over the last year and a half have bought fifteen dual quad core PowerEdge 1950 servers, a giant PowerEdge 2900, and a host of other various 1U boxes.
Three weeks ago, I was on my third Dell account team since I started here two and a half years ago. The rep I had was excellent. She went out of her way to solve problems for me. She got quotes out to me lightning quick. She was always pleasant to deal with, and sincerely interested in helping out whenever she could. I had actually even emailed Mike Dell and told him how great this rep was, and how happy I was dealing with her.
In my professional career, I've had direct dealings with Dell since about 1999. I standardized VPIsystems on Dell and Unisys gear, and we spent a ton of money on Dell desktops, workstations, and peripherals. At Rubin & Raine, I inherited an Everex server with dumb terminals, and by the time I left everyone had Dell desktops and laptops (except for Pat and his battle worn - and great - Toshiba), and about five Dell servers. Through various consulting gigs I did I always deployed Dell gear, and now at my current job, which I don't mention the name of but you can figure it out if you Google, we've become pretty much all Dell for our infrastructure. (We still develop on IBM Blades, Sun, and HP boxes.)
About two weeks ago I got an email from my new Dell rep saying that my account had been transitioned:
Your account currently resides in the Dell Business Development Group (BDG) where you have access to a variety of services and benefits to meet the specific IT demands of your company.
The primary reason for the e-mail today is to let you know there has been an update on your account team. Effective immediately, I will be the primary Dell contact for your company. If there is an outstanding purchase or issue I need to follow up on, let me know who you were working with and I will follow up with them to ensure there is no break in service. In the weeks to come, I will be calling to introduce myself and briefly review a couple of items.
Your company will continue to be eligible for acquisition pricing and various other services including Premier Page, Premier Access, elevated level of tech support and customer care, etc.
As your account manager I lead your account team which consists of a Server & Storage Consultant, 3rd Party Licensing Specialist, 3rd Party Peripheral Specialist and Dell Financial Services Officer. Please use me as your point of contact but feel free to contact your specialized team member as well (see my signature for your account team’s contact information).
Right off the bat, the first thing that I noticed was the "in the weeks to come." (The bolding is mine.) Alright, you're taking over my account. I've spent in excess of $100k on Dell gear in the last three months or so. Why are you going to wait weeks to get in touch with me? It's a fairly nit-picky thing, but it left a sour taste in my mouth.
I then went to my old rep and tried to see what I could do. Unfortunately there is nothing she could do about losing my account. I already had the email addresses of some of the higher ups with Dell's Oklahoma call center, so I went about contacting them. It took a few days but someone did get back to me.
I should stop the story right here and take you back to 2000, when I had another excellent Dell rep by the name of Steve Milam. Eight years later and I still remember his name. He was, by far, one of the best salespeople (even outside of Dell) I had ever dealt with. He ended up getting transitioned to a higher level within Dell, and I got a new rep. The new rep was okay, but not nearly as good as Steve. I suffered through that for a few months before I left VPI. While I was at Rubin & Raine, the same thing happened. I had a decent (but not as good as Steve) rep, and was transitioned three times in rapid-fire sequence, each rep being progressively worse than the previous one. I finally had to email Mike Dell again and ask them to knock it off -- which they did for a month or two.
I spoke with Holly, who is my old rep's supervisor's supervisor. She assured me that my new account team - who has less accounts to deal with than my current rep - would be just as good, if not better. I pleaded with her to stay with my current rep, which she told me was not possible at her level, but she said she'd try to escalate the issue. She said that there were various political things that went on behind the scenes that made my seemingly easy to fulfill request impossible. I told her that Dell's political machinations are irrelevant to me, and the only thing that was important to me was staying with a rep that my company had a great working relationship.
I also escalated to Holly's boss Chris, who has yet to return my phone calls.
The last few days I requested some quotes from my new account team. It took several hours to get a quote back, and I only got them after I prodded my account rep to get them to me before a meeting. I also spoke with the storage specialist in my team, who didn't know what an ISCSI HBA was.
I got a call this morning from my rep's supervisor who attempted to defuse the situation. I told him the only thing that would make me happy would be if my account didn't get transitioned, and he quickly shot back "well it's already been transitioned." I told him that if I had to deal with a new account team, then it's worth my while to go deal with a new team at IBM or HP, since I am sure that they don't play musical reps like they do at Dell.
It's amazing to me that Dell would jeopardize an account - one that is growing and spending a lot of money - because of their own backroom dealings. It's also amazing that Dell is trying to "rebrand" itself and show the world that it's more customer focused. This process - which I have lived through about five times - is incredibly harmful to their dealings with customers. Their response to my unhappiness has been one of inflexibility. I have no choice to bend to the will of Dell, according to what I am told.
My IBM rep will be ecstatic to hear about this.