Third Party Warranty for Servers

[Mr_Jiminy]

Has anyone sourced third party warranties for server hardware?

Our ususal rule is to replace after 5 years, based on the Dell Pro Support warranty covering that period. However, we're looking to extend the life of one of the servers by 2 years and would like warranty cover throughout that period.

The prices coming back for Dell cover are silly, hence the reason for considering third party.

[dhicks]

Has anyone sourced third party warranties for server hardware?

 

I think forum sponsers ICT Direct (@ICTDirect_Dave) do pretty much exactly this.

[ColonelPanic]

Yep, providing the kit isn't ancient - most of our suppliers will find somebody to provide a 3rd party warranty. At the moment we're using Kyonet.

[willtech]

We use https://www.warrantyworld.co.uk/ for Dell.

[6Foot3]

Go to Dell you can extend up until 7 year old equipment.

[PotNoodleTech]

Most of the refurbished suppliers like ICT direct can do third party warranty. Server hardware fails so infrequently that your much better off putting those yearly payments into buying another new server every 3 years or even just a spare chassis.

[nicholab]

Can you source parts and can you run for a short time without the server? Just buy it when it breaks.

[zoohead]

We previously used https://www.parkplacetechnologies.com/ to support some Dell R630 servers, Dell SAN and Dell network switches and and they were very good.

 

Ian

[mikes]

We found the warranties too expensive - we have 3 redundant Lenovo servers - one of them died and nobody noticed as VMWare handled the VM's by itself. (faulty RAM module - easily fixed).

Not sure paying the warranties is worth it - we'd have spent enough in the past 3 years without warranties, where we could have bought an entirely new server - I know you get support but with 3 redundant servers how important is it really? VMware/network support contracts seem more valuable to me

[Millgate_Victoria]

Millgate do get asked to quote on 3rd party hardware breakfix services, typically the info they want is , site device, device type, mfr, model , OS, Serial number, SLA required like 24/7 or nbd and what drive sizes and types the servers, storage devices have etc.

[FN-GM]

We found the warranties too expensive - we have 3 redundant Lenovo servers - one of them died and nobody noticed as VMWare handled the VM's by itself. (faulty RAM module - easily fixed).

Not sure paying the warranties is worth it - we'd have spent enough in the past 3 years without warranties, where we could have bought an entirely new server - I know you get support but with 3 redundant servers how important is it really? VMware/network support contracts seem more valuable to me

 

I suppose I depends on how your school values the uptime and how it can cope if that server was completely offline for an extended period.

[PotNoodleTech]

I suppose I depends on how your school values the uptime and how it can cope if that server was completely offline for an extended period.

 

Out of interest how many of your servers have died and taken stuff down for weeks?

[dmj]

I don't believe warranty on server hardware is necessary, I'd even go as far as to say it is bad practice. My reasoning is as follows: All hardware breaks, it is 100% guaranteed to fail. Warranties on servers re-enforces the idea that they are 'special' and can't go offline - this is the wrong attitude because if fosters a lack of resilience on systems, which should be clustered and have resistance to failure. What we should be doing is treating the servers as cattle and not pets. If a server has a hiccup, don't bother fixing it, take it out the back and shoot it then replace it. Spend the money on more, cheaper servers ( I've clustered gaming rigs in the past for a fraction of the cost of 'server hardware') and forget the warranty. It's a big architectural and mindset change if you're used to having one or two high cost, high spec servers but I believe it's a better choice.

[mikes]

I suppose I depends on how your school values the uptime and how it can cope if that server was completely offline for an extended period.

 

Well they are 3 redundant vhosts so if one goes down nobody even notices as the VM's are automatically moved to the 2 that still work - if they were physical servers like it was 2002 still then an individual servers' uptime might matter - one did fail and I got it fixed and not even my boss would have noticed had I not told her. If it had totally failed we'd just buy a new one (2 servers doesn't provide enough redundancy) - the money saved not having warranties for the past 2-3 years would probably be the cost of a new server anyhow. Even our contractor (who would have made money) recommended against server warranties as the price vs what you get is just not worth it for older servers

 

Does anyone even have physical servers anymore? I know some recommend SIMS runs on one, our old NM bought a standalone server for SIMS 10 years ago but he couldn't get the .net framework installed on Windows Server so he just gave up and the expensive server sat idle never used for 10 years until we got rid of it as it was obsolete by then...

Edited February 20, 2025 by mikes

[PotNoodleTech]

Well they are 3 redundant vhosts so if one goes down nobody even notices as the VM's are automatically moved to the 2 that still work - if they were physical servers like it was 2002 still then an individual servers' uptime might matter - one did fail and I got it fixed and not even my boss would have noticed had I not told her. If it had totally failed we'd just buy a new one (2 servers doesn't provide enough redundancy) - the money saved not having warranties for the past 2-3 years would probably be the cost of a new server anyhow. Even our contractor (who would have made money) recommended against server warranties as the price vs what you get is just not worth it for older servers

 

Does anyone even have physical servers anymore? I know some recommend SIMS runs on one, our old NM bought a standalone server for SIMS 10 years ago but he couldn't get the .net framework installed on Windows Server so he just gave up and the expensive server sat idle never used for 10 years until we got rid of it as it was obsolete by then...

 

Sounds good. What you using for storage?

[FN-GM]

Out of interest how many of your servers have died and taken stuff down for weeks?

 

Zero because I have kept them under a good support contract. Everything is on a 4 hour response 24x7. Once out of the initial support it is removed from service.

Edited February 25, 2025 by FN-GM

[FN-GM]

Well they are 3 redundant vhosts so if one goes down nobody even notices as the VM's are automatically moved to the 2 that still work - if they were physical servers like it was 2002 still then an individual servers' uptime might matter - one did fail and I got it fixed and not even my boss would have noticed had I not told her. If it had totally failed we'd just buy a new one (2 servers doesn't provide enough redundancy) - the money saved not having warranties for the past 2-3 years would probably be the cost of a new server anyhow. Even our contractor (who would have made money) recommended against server warranties as the price vs what you get is just not worth it for older servers

 

I think that is fair, you have answered the question and what is acceptable to the organisation.

 

 

 

Does anyone even have physical servers anymore?

 

We do - VMware hypervisors plus physicals for CCTV. It was much cheaper a to go physical for CCTV, very little benefit for virtualising it.

[PotNoodleTech]

Zero because I have kept them under a good support contract. Everything is on a 4 hour response 24x7. Once out of the initial support it is removed from service.

 

Cool. So how many have failed within the support contract?

[speakercon]

Replication to another host can be a good option. We don't warranty any of our servers, all the VM's are replicated so if there was a host failure the replica could be booted up swiftly. The money saved on warranties would then be used to repair/replace failed host.

[FN-GM]

Cool. So how many have failed within the support contract?

 

Plenty, we had a component fail 2 weeks ago, it was a drive failure. In recent times we have also had a motherboard replaced. All replacements arrive extremely quickly and systems back healthy ASAP.

[FN-GM]

For those without support, what happens if you need a firmware update that is behind a paywall? Dell seem to be ok with this and keep everything open. HPE less so…

[nicholab]

For those without support, what happens if you need a firmware update that is behind a paywall? Dell seem to be ok with this and keep everything open. HPE less so…

 

I found that my DL389 G9 server I was able to get a critical fix for free. That was like a couple of years old I think that was 2022 in 2024. But that would make me choose second hand hardware based on firmware support.

[PotNoodleTech]

For those without support, what happens if you need a firmware update that is behind a paywall? Dell seem to be ok with this and keep everything open. HPE less so…

 

TBH I only buy dell poweredge so i've never had to find out about bad driver support!