Warranty on +3 year old kit

[kennysarmy]

Our main virtual infrastructure is coming up to 3 years old...

 

I've just had a quote from HP for covering the following items for 12 months:

 

HP DL380 Gen9 E5-2620v3 Base WW Server x 3

 

HP StoreVirtual 4730 600gb SAS x 2

 

HP D2600 Disk Enclosure x 1

 

Cost is a huge £8,583.68 for their HP Foundation Care 24x7 Support Contract

 

Seems an awful lot of money!!!

[Steve21]

Did you want 24/7 cover rather than 9/5 etc? Might save a chunk

 

Also this is why we generally found it worked out better to buy new kit slowly with the savings on extended warranties (Past the original which we get 5-7 on)

 

Steve

[mikkydoos]

£8,583.68 just for support ? Flippin' 'ell.

 

Suppose they do have to factor in parts replacement but come on !

[synaesthesia]

So, the enclosure is just about £1k on the nose new, the servers a bare £1500 for base model going up to 3.5 for all the mod cons and storage is just storage... you could pretty much replace all that kit with a nice, brand new set of warranties for the same cost!

[fiza]

Our main virtual infrastructure is coming up to 3 years old...

 

I've just had a quote from HP for covering the following items for 12 months:

 

HP DL380 Gen9 E5-2620v3 Base WW Server x 3

 

HP StoreVirtual 4730 600gb SAS x 2

 

HP D2600 Disk Enclosure x 1

 

Cost is a huge £8,583.68 for their HP Foundation Care 24x7 Support Contract

 

Seems an awful lot of money!!!

 

We get 3rd party support for our HP and Dell Servers after the 3 year standard warranty. Works out much cheaper and they do 24/7/4 or 13/5/4 guaranteed fix.

 

We went through IML Technology to get it.

[Fazza]

When 2 of our Hyper-V servers ran out of the 3yr Warranty we didnt bother on extending the warranty. Instead we support them ourselves as we have suppliers that can deliver parts the next day should we need them.

[JordanT91]

I know this thread is about HP servers, but it's worth noting that Dell offer free lifetime telephone support for their servers, they just can't give you replacement parts without a warranty. Basically they will help you troubleshoot and tell you what parts you need to get and how to fit them.

[Norphy]

We get 3rd party support for our HP and Dell Servers after the 3 year standard warranty. Works out much cheaper and they do 24/7/4 or 13/5/4 guaranteed fix.

 

We went through IML Technology to get it.

 

This.

 

Although the college I worked for at the time used PDQ

[Chris_]

We're running VMware vSphere on 3x HP DL385 hosts and a SAN. We looked at the costs for extending warranty on the HP hosts after the 3 years but it was ridiculous. Decided that as we could tolerate 2x host failures we'd continue without warranty.

 

Bit the bullet on a new SAN as it's our single point of failure and didn't want to risk running on something without warranty.

[CyBeRkId2002]

We use Park PLace (previously Computer Computer Ltd) and have been very happy. Prices are fantastic too!

[MYK-IT]

In the past, I too have found that extending warranties usually ends costing more, or nearly as much as replacing with new.

 

Over time though, my 'haggling' skills now usually gets me 5-years for the same cost as 3-years warranty; and with Dell kit you can get 7-year NBD or 24/7 support too; for v. little extra from the offset.

 

In relation to your existing servers, you could (should) just continue to use them as if spec'd them sufficiently at time of purchase, 3-year old kit shouldn't necessitate getting rid of, and buy replacement (or for spares) from Server Source - Europe's Leading provider of Refurbished Dell PowerEdge and PowerVault servers (I know they deal with Dell Kit, and your HP - but still an option)

[Fazza]

In the past, I too have found that extending warranties usually ends costing more, or nearly as much as replacing with new.

 

Over time though, my 'haggling' skills now usually gets me 5-years for the same cost as 3-years warranty; and with Dell kit you can get 7-year NBD or 24/7 support too; for v. little extra from the offset.

 

In relation to your existing servers, you could (should) just continue to use them as if spec'd them sufficiently at time of purchase, 3-year old kit shouldn't necessitate getting rid of, and buy replacement (or for spares) from Server Source - Europe's Leading provider of Refurbished Dell PowerEdge and PowerVault servers (I know they deal with Dell Kit, and your HP - but still an option)

 

We use them for all our servers across the trust and have only had to call them a couple of times - once was for a battering in a RAID card needing replacing and another was one of the many, many hard disks we have had failed - both occasions the parts and (if applicable) engineer turned up the next day!

[gshaw]

Hosts it'll be cheaper to get a spare in from Serversource or similar and just back up any configs for VMware etc. then switch them over if required.

 

SANs are more tricky as if that goes down, especially because of a software issue you may be up creek without paddle if support lapses so be careful there.

[kennysarmy]

I've been seeking alternative quotes, who knew warranties could be so complicated:

 

I can have:

 

ProLiant DL380 G9 M-F 0900-1700 8 Response (1 Year) Hardware Only Support

 

or

 

ProLiant DL380 G9 M-F 0900-1700 8 Fix (1 Year) Hardware Only Support

 

or

 

ProLiant DL380 G9 M-SU 0000-2400 4 Response (1 Year) Hardware Only Support

 

or

 

ProLiant DL380 G9 M-SU 0000-2400 4 Fix (1 Year) Hardware Only Support

 

 

Definitions;

Response- Onsite 8 Hrs Response

Fix- Onsite 4 Hrs Fix

 

 

Perhaps someone could allay my confusion with some examples of the difference between a response and fix warranty?

 

Thanks.

[Steve21]

Well I'm guessing that's another name for CTR

 

4 hours response is a man on site within 4 hours to look at and start fixing

4 hours CTR is its repaired within 4 hours from your call etc

 

Basically CTR is top level priority you can't live without kind of stuff

 

Unless they changed their names again

 

Steve

[Fazza]

Perhaps someone could allay my confusion with some examples of the difference between a response and fix warranty?

 

A response is exactly that, a response to you raising a fault with them. It should be defined in your SLA and could either mean someone responds to your incident either vie email, phone or by coming onsite to take a look at the problem. If they can fix it they will, if they cant, well they're responded so they have fulfilled their part of the SLA so it will then move on to the next step which could take hours, days or weeks depending on what parts (if any are required).

 

A fix means they will endevour to fix the issue within the allotted time in your SLA depending on availability of parts etc. if they guarantee a fix within an allotted time (say 1 business day) then that's better than a response time of 1 day as it will be up to 1 day before they even look at the problem let alone fix it!

 

A lot of contracts/SLAs will have a mixture of the 2 and the times differ depending on the level of the incident (i.e. Low, Medium or High priorities) so for example a low priority incident may have a response time of 4 hours but a fix time of 2 days.

 

In my last place of work each year we paid for an 8hr fix or replace warranty on the area managers laptops so the company would have to either fix or replace the laptop within 8hrs - we paid a lot of money for this service as the area managers struggled without them and in the business world, time is money!

 

You have to read the proposed contract/SLA very carefully and I would strongly advise you to give them a couple of scenarios of what you would consider a low priority incident and a high priority incident to make sure what you think should happen would actually happen.

[PotNoodleTech]

IMHO extended warranty it's a pointless waste of money. Take that 8k you would have wasted and replace a server (or two!) every year.

[Fazza]

IMHO extended warranty it's a pointless waste of money. Take that 8k you would have wasted and replace a server (or two!) every year.

 

It's what we do once the initial warranty is up. As long as you have a plan (and the correct technical skills) then you dont need an extended warranty. Having said that, we always get a 3yr warranty on new desktops and servers (mainly because the companies we buy from offer it as standard) and we just stick with the 1yr warranty on laptops as most of the issues (i.e. damage) that we get on laptops is not covered by the warranty.

 

We have a large pile of 'Spares and Repairs' laptops that we use to fix or repair laptops that come in and we can get most parts wholesale through our normal supply chain.

 

A couple of years ago we had some storage that failed on us and it was the unit rather than the hard disks so I contacted our suppliers and said I needed quotes back the same morning and needed the kit the next day. We ended up with a fantastic deal from ServerSource and got the kit the next day as they understood the urgency of the situation. So much cheaper than having an extended warranty on the kit.

 

As we have the technical skills to quickly setup and configure a server from scratch this works very well for us. If you dont have such skills then an extended warranty can be beneficial until you gain such skills/confidence.

[Katy]

Hosts it'll be cheaper to get a spare in from Serversource or similar and just back up any configs for VMware etc. then switch them over if required.

 

SANs are more tricky as if that goes down, especially because of a software issue you may be up creek without paddle if support lapses so be careful there.

 

This, we just got the standard 3 year next day onsite service with our servers, and when it ran out 3 years ago we didn't extend it. We can run our VM load on 2 of the 3 hosts which should in theory give us time to source a replacement and throw ESXi on it. The main SAN however we pay for remote monitoring, costs us about £800 + VAT a year. First 4 years they only came out for firmware updates as the thing "just worked" with 0 drive failures but the last couple of years we've had our money's worth in "free" failed drive replacements.

[AlanD]

I, for one, possibly the only one, have never understood the addiction that some network managers have for hardware warranty. When the manufacturer's warranty runs out on my car..I don't make any effort to extend the warranty. In fact...as you would find out should you ever need something repairing while its under warranty...the list of exceptions ...and allowance for "wear and tear"....rarely means they give you new for old on anything. The original warranty on my servers run out years ago....but even if I had extended them...the best it would provide is someone on come on site to tell me what I already knew...."sorry the main board has failed". Would they replace that....almost certainly not, because the boards ceased to be made in the year following the server purchase...and what stocks there were have long gone. Yes...they would offer me the cost of the new board against a new server replacement...and no the processors and memory could not be transferred to a new board - because all the new boards are a different socket type. And lets face it...its not rocket science to run up a new HyperV server box (or VMware if you must) and reconnect it to a SAN to get all your virtual servers back. And even if you had to pay for an engineer for a day - I bet it wouldn't be the annual cost of warranty for just one of your servers.

 

Now there may be an argument for a small primary school with limited budgets to struggle to unexpectedly find the cost for a new server - and so they might choose to pay a warranty cost (although...as I describe...they are still likely to end up paying for a replacement,,,because no warranty offers new of old on servers...). But for larger schools ...it needs to be covered by a general reserve and the Bursar/accounts staff need to understand this risk....which statistically is always going to work out in your favour.

 

And warranty just to cover the things that are likely to fail....like RAID drives certainly aren't worth it....much cheaper to buy a spare drive ready for the moment one fails. And same goes for Power supplies - and I've only seen one of a pair of server power supplies fail in in a server in a period over 30 years - and never a server motherboard.

 

Yes - inclusive warranty on a new product is a nice bonus if you are not paying extra for it....but extending your warranty doesn't somehow prevent a server breaking down....nor prevent the disruption its going to cause you - and that is the "real cost" or a failure...

 

Often school spend money on these products...and fail to replace the batteries in their 3 year old UPS...so a power outage causes the hard disks to corrupt....or become careless about allowing staff connect via VPN/remote desktop from ransomware infected home computers....or bringing in infected pen sticks only to discover that their latest virus update doesn't protect them against that strain.

 

Server failure (hardware wise) is unlikely - very unlikely if you ignore hard disks and power supplies....certainly not worth paying warranty for....

[chazzy2501]

I always buy the 5 year support at pos it usually only costs another 10% and can reduce the TCO (as I use 5 year refreshes on critical hardware)