One of the concerns I had when I converted from my power-hungry-but-bulletproof Sparc servers to these small Arm boxes was how reliable the hardware would be over time. Here's my personal experience with these devices to date.
SheevaPlug - The first Arm device I acquired was a SheevaPlug. I put it in service in the fall of 2009. The power supply lasted about a year, but this was a well-known point of failure with these Plugs. When mine eventually bit the dust, I replaced it with a wall-wart and the Sheeva has been running reliably ever since. (It's cheap SD card did develop bit errors after a couple years continual use, and had to be replaced, but I won't hold that failure against the Plug.)
Dockstars - I acquired two of them in the fall of 2010. One had a problem out of the box: It booted and ran OK, but there was a (latent) bit error in the uBoot section of the NAND. I went ahead and reflashed the uBoot anyway and ran it for several months, then swapped it for the other Dockstar. When I next tried to put it into service, it was dead. I suspect the NAND developed some other bit errors which were not so latent. The other Dockstar ran a couple years and was retired. I suspect it would boot if I tried it today, but I haven't run it for the better part of the past three years.
PogoPlug E02 - I've acquired several of these and have had good luck with them. Two have been running for about 2.5 years now. Except for the fact that one Plug, or its disk, seems a bit sensitive to RF (I'm a ham radio op) and occasionally while hamming its disk will take errors and gets remapped to read-only mode, requiring a reboot, I've had zero problems with these units. (And, since I've added some ferrites to the cords, that problem has largely disappeared.) In any event, I have a couple spares on the shelf just in case one dies.
In short, I've been amazed at the apparent long-term reliability of these little devices.
So, what's your experience?
SheevaPlug - The first Arm device I acquired was a SheevaPlug. I put it in service in the fall of 2009. The power supply lasted about a year, but this was a well-known point of failure with these Plugs. When mine eventually bit the dust, I replaced it with a wall-wart and the Sheeva has been running reliably ever since. (It's cheap SD card did develop bit errors after a couple years continual use, and had to be replaced, but I won't hold that failure against the Plug.)
Dockstars - I acquired two of them in the fall of 2010. One had a problem out of the box: It booted and ran OK, but there was a (latent) bit error in the uBoot section of the NAND. I went ahead and reflashed the uBoot anyway and ran it for several months, then swapped it for the other Dockstar. When I next tried to put it into service, it was dead. I suspect the NAND developed some other bit errors which were not so latent. The other Dockstar ran a couple years and was retired. I suspect it would boot if I tried it today, but I haven't run it for the better part of the past three years.
PogoPlug E02 - I've acquired several of these and have had good luck with them. Two have been running for about 2.5 years now. Except for the fact that one Plug, or its disk, seems a bit sensitive to RF (I'm a ham radio op) and occasionally while hamming its disk will take errors and gets remapped to read-only mode, requiring a reboot, I've had zero problems with these units. (And, since I've added some ferrites to the cords, that problem has largely disappeared.) In any event, I have a couple spares on the shelf just in case one dies.
In short, I've been amazed at the apparent long-term reliability of these little devices.
So, what's your experience?