I like the SuperMicros personally I have 9 in my Miami Data Center. However, explaining why the client has never heard of SM might be a fight not worth having. If you are a Dell reseller take your 10 points and be done with it. If the client doesn’t know what they need then you can charge them for consulting time to help them get a good quote, or just let them buy whatever and make your money on service.
The problem I always have with any equipment I sell (white box stuff) is that the client calls you for every issue and even if its software related you have a hard time billing for it (my experience anyway). From: Neil Standley [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 2:23 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: TS server recommendations That’s why I brought my question here, I apparently have no idea what I’m doing J….. We’re big fans of Supermicro systems, that’s all we use here to run our ISP so we go with what we know. The customer contacted us for a quote and told us that he was shopping around, Dell is probably just one of a few vendors he’s shopping. Thanks to all for your help, it’s been very helpful. Now I have to go revise my quote!!! Neil From: Benjamin Zachary - Lists [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 10:32 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: TS server recommendations Too much disk, the ts should be treated like a workstation, prone to failure due to user error. Everything in my documents should be redirected to a file share so your drive space is quite minimal 30-40gb or so. That’s also overkill for TS and 20 users by a long shot. I have a server like that, non-Xeon running esxi with TS, SQL, SBS and a MYSQL db server and they never have a blip. When quoting out be careful to not overdo it else you may price yourself out of the water. Be prepared to explain the power house J Why are you competing against Dell? Are you trying to build a white box server and compare it to Dell? I think you lose about everytime, due to support, parts and all the goodies, like DRAC, dual-gig etc. Why don’t you get the Dell quote and then go and see if you can beat it so you are comparing similar configurations. From: Neil Standley [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 1:15 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: TS server recommendations Hello I’ve been tasked with putting a quote together for a customer and need some assistance. They require a Term server that’ll support 20 users with Office 2007 Small business, the customers primary need is for Word and Excel. Do you think this is sufficient to support 20 concurrent users? I’m trying to compete against Dell for the customer’s bid so I need to keep it as low as possible. Dual Quad-core Xeons (2.33Ghz) 8GB RAM 3 disk Raid 5 (plus spare) (7200 Rpm drives) w 15 or 32MB cache + Hardware raid controller cache has (512MB) Win2K3 Thanks for your input. Neil ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
