A big motivator is that NetApp tripled their maintenance costs. Conversations and negotiations seem to indicate to me that rather than support older (yet still supported) hardware they would prefer the customer to purchase new controllers. The problem with that is the customer has to re-purchase the software along with purchasing the new controllers. That being the case, and with the storage market changing, 3rd party would just be an option until the other filers fall out of their current maintenance contract. Leading up to that we'll begin discussing alternatives to NetApp. I really hate that too. I was pleased with the performance, compatibility and features. And, of course, I've been working with it so long I'm pretty darn comfortable with it.
-Paul -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of James M. Pulver Sent: Monday, August 01, 2016 3:03 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Recommendations for 3rd party hardware maitenance I've never used such a service, but I wonder what you might expect to actually get from them? We have pretty specific hardware, like a Flex x240 or specific System X 3550 M3 server configuration platform that doesn't often show up on, say, ebay the way a System Networking G8052 might. So if you have a dual processor v3 6 core Xeon, and yours dies, can they get and plug in a new one the way IBM/Lenovo (insert OEM here) would? What about a system board? The small print I saw was riddled with things like "can get equivalent hardware" - well for us that's pretty useless. A Dell blade isn't going to slot into a Flex chassis for instance. A 1U isn't the same either in terms of physical space, etc... So I've been pretty much just keeping my own spares on hand and replacing hardware as is possible because I'm not at all sure these sorts of services would actually be useful. James Pulver CLASSE Computer Group Cornell University On 08/01/2016 03:46 PM, Maglinger, Paul wrote: > I've been asked to look at a third-party for hardware maintenance. A few > names have popped up several times including Reliant Technology and Park > Place. > Has anyone had any experience with either of these? At this time it would be > for NetApp filers but could expand into HP, Dell, and Cisco. > > TIA > > Paul > >
