Hi all,
I have just finished talking to IBM about my support agreement. First the
contracts people don't know about AFS, you already know that. I got the name
and number of an IBM person who does know all about AFS, not just a little but
everything. He did tell me that if you are renewing , as most of are, that
depending on your servers the price will vary. For instance, I have all Sun
servers and all different clients. Nt, Sgi, Sun, Linux, and Dec. My software
support for 7x24 and 6 callers is 6220.80 for a year. The clients are free. No
cost. The Sun servers are the only cost and I can have as many as I want. Now
if you run server on Nt, Linux or AIX there is a higher cost. Maybe. If you
are an AIX shop you probably will have support already and the AFS is part of
the Com & Network group. So there the price may drop a whole lot. If you are
running servers on Linux or Nt the price starts going up. Linux is the most
expensive. Funny when you think that Linux is suppose to be cheap or free to
use. I think the reason people are starting to see very high prices is that
the contract people do not know the difference between a server and a client.
So when you say "I have 300 Linux and 200 Nt's and 5 SGI's, they think its all
servers and charge you that way. My contract started at 22 grand and went
down to 6200. So the person's name is:
Gary Gerchak 512-838-2715 or 1-800-426-4968
Gary knows are people in Pittsburg. He talks to them all the time, so he is
very in tune to whats going on. He also told me that 3.6 support will continue
until Dec 31, 2002 yes 2002. He said you will still end up talking to the
same people we a use to in Pittsburg as well. He also said that every AFS
customer can get AFS 3.6 free from there site during this transition period. I
though this was good news for all , I know I was pretty happy that the price
went down not up.
Well thats all from me.
Stan Naymola
Fermi Lab