On Thursday 24 April 2008 03:56:32 pm Sean Waite wrote: > The initial costs savings of the purchase are highly negated by the > longterm. First, in 5-10 years will this company still be around, and will > they have any support for this? Where will you go to purchase parts in 3-5 > years, especially if they are no longer in business? I have seen countless > times people having to re-purchase equipment simply because a replacement > part could not be found. Last year a client had to replace a server because > of a problem on the motherboard. They were using a white-box server. On the > other hand, in this same week I replaced the power supply to my HP DL380 > that is about 7 years old. If they were using an IBM, Sun, or HP server > then we could have simply purchased a new motherboard and kept the server > up an running. The initial cost savings of say $500 was really outweighed > by the $4000 price to replace the server. > > I also would emphasize that the support from HP is going to be of much > higher quality than what this company can provide. Again with HP, one > Friday night at midnight I called their support regarding an issue with a > server. Saturday morning I got a call in from a team of HP support techs > who worked together to find the solution. I highly doubt you will get that > from this company. In fact their support is M-F NBH. If a problem arises > over the weekend, calculate the cost of having this down on Monday waiting > for a solution as opposed to simply having it resolved and operational by > Sunday. Don't look at costs alone, especially for a business. Keep in mind > that the costs will be written off at the end of the year anyways. Over > the years I can count numerous examples where people and businesses have > been simply burned by going with the cost solution purchasing hardware such > as white-box, low-end, consumer oriented, or 2nd tier MFRs. It's one thing > to purchase from a place like this for a home computer, but quite the > opposite when using this as a core business product. > > Sean > RE: HP "Support" (pulled from the archives) Me: "Hi I'd like to order a replacement hard drive for my proliant server. I have contract for 4 hour support 24x7. My serial number is ___, the part number is _____" HP Guy: "thank you please hold while I transfer you to the person that can help you" Me: "Sure" HP Girl: "Hello How are you today?" Me: "I'm fine how are you?" HP Girl: "Fine thank you. I see you are ordering a replacement part for your server. I'm sorry but your contract is only valid between 2006 and 2007" Me (after a pause to reflect): "...isn't it 2006 now?" HP Girl: "Please hold." Me (to self): "you have got to be f$@%^#g kidding me." HP Girl (same girl as before): "Hello how are you today?" Me: "I'm fine thank you. Can I have my drive please?" HP Girl: "certainly. can you please tell me the part number?" Me: "The part number is ___" HP Girl: "I see you have 4 hour service, 24x7. Would you like the drive tomorrow or today?" Me: "Ummm today... within 4 hours?" HP Girl: "Oh ok!" While I certainly agree that support is important to a business, my own experience with HP has been less than stellar. I'd also recommend buying storage from a company that does storage over a company that seems to do a bit of everything. I'm also anti-put-parts-in-7-year-old-x86-boxes too, but in my world companies don't let things like x86 servers get out of warrenty. They depreciate them down over the life of the warranty then replace them when it expires. -- Thanks, Josh Paetzel PGP: 8A48 EF36 5E9F 4EDA 5A8C 11B4 26F9 01F1 27AF AECB -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 195 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20080424/e464ce15/attachment.pgp