crazy quote for new server! what do you think?

[titch]

Hi guys

 

Im pretty new to working in schools, and i.t to be honest as this is my first job and have only been here a few months.

 

I dont really no the politics of prices charges within education for work undertaken but when i recieved a qoute for 14k my mouth dropped. Being a savvy person ive asked for a more detailed breakdown of the qoute and instalation. What do you guys think of this price? what would you expect to pay?

 

We have been basically looking for a new server to upgrade our our old nt system. All the cableing is there, we need no software (except server 2003), the main reason to upgrade truly is because we constantly run out of space on the nt system (obvously i could pop another hard drive in but were after a longer term solution).

 

The nt system seems to serve us well considering its age and specs so a flash server is not really needed. We have 31 pcs around the school (all cabled in) and around 15 laptops linked via 5 access points. 3 networked printers.

 

we asked for a qoute from our council (hampshire)who run edict and swan, which supplies us with our internet, as it seems alote easier to go through them as they supply us with everything else.

 

this is a basic breakdown of the qoute (figures are rounded)

 

sc1430 school server = £1670

server 2003 = 70

ordering and handling = 200

project management = 950

instalation = 8000!!!!!!

training 370

edictnet product fee = 300

 

varous other smaller bits which we asked for that make up the rest but are quite insignificant

 

now correct me if im wrong but when they install the server they will unplug the old one, plug in the new one, setup the printers etc, fiddle with some domain settings + migrate our nt users etc. Maybe have to logon to each computer at most and install some network monitoring tools or something. This to me seems like a days work for someone with experience.

 

could someone please put me in my place and tell me that im wrong and this is long job,because as of this moment im currently thinking of building the blinkin thing myself and saving a hell of a lot of money.

 

another quick question......2674 for office 2003 on 53 pcs? sound correct?

 

cheers for any help or information guys, any suggestions comments would be greatly appreciated

 

(p.s i assume this is in the correct forum, if not sorry and feel free to move it)

[Midget]

First off before I forget: Office licence is $50, so should only be £25-30 per licenece depending on exchange rate

 

What do they mean by project management? and I know how much work is involved in a server install, but £8k is pushing it a bit.

 

I may get shot for this, but give NSOptimum (the supplier I primarily use) a call and see what they'd do it for.

 

01926880300 and ask for Brian Higgins

[titch]

i would love to tell you what "project management" is, maybe the man that does the ordering? or the guy that makes the tea? either way hes getting 950 quid for it

 

how much work is involved in this install do you think? id be really interested in the actual process of putting a new server in and the real time you think it might take

 

cheers for the quick reply, ill give those guys a ring and see what price they can give us, cheers again

[ConTheITGuy]

Our local County guys took 2-3 days to put our new admin server in. They charged approx. £900! No project management charge, or product fee, or handling fee, or training fee that I hadn't asked for (maybe you did ask for training). I am also presuming you will need Server 2003 CALs for your PCs & Laptops. If you can get MS licenses on Select, I think these are around a fiver each machine. If you're confident enough, I would seriously consider sourcing and commisioning the server yourself, although this may depend on politics also! For example where I have added numerous servers to our curriculum network, it wasn't my place at the time to replace the one on the admin network.

 

Regarding Office, again if you can use Select, these are IIRC around 30-35 quid each.

 

 

Andy

[Lee_K_81]

I'd give them a call and ask if they made a typo. £8k to install a 1.6k server? c'mon. Tell you what, i'll do it for 1k plus expenses.

 

£800 would be acceptable, you could save money if you did it yourself, but it may be worth the cost to take the stress off your hands. If you sit and watch them, see what they do then you'd be more confident next time. Or if you feel confident and the school has faith in you go for it. Do it yourself. Word of caution though, i would buy the server. Not the components. Takes the hassel out of it if anything dies.

[SimpleSi]

I suspect simple typo also £8K = £800

 

regards

 

Simon

[apeo]

It looks like a well dodgy quote, i mean almost 2k is just admin charges really (Like those ones that the banks use to charge to send you a letter to say your overdrawn or something) and 8k!!!. As stated by the others, I would setup the server yourself if you can and if not (or not worth the hastle) get more quotes. You are supposed to get 3 quotes anyway arent ya...

[titch]

well the reason we only got this qoute so far is because this is who we were advised to use as a "managed" solution to a new server which would could be automated by the local council who supply our tinternet. Although 14k for a bit off an easy life doesnt seem justifiable.

 

If anyone on here works for edict/swan or hampshire or have this system installed i would love to hear your opinions. Seems to me that being overcharged by a group which works for the same people as you is a bit silly,

 

also just found out they we got a qoute a few years back for a seperate server in the office which incorparates 3 pcs and a printer. Guess what 3k installation only. Im really looking forward to the break dowN of the instalation charges they send

[CHR1S]

Thats appaling! Something very fishy there

[GrumbleDook]

I presume that you are a primary? Is there a local secondary you can ask for help with setting it up?

 

Ok ... onto the heart of the matter. The cost of the server seems ok, I have a few concerns about backup ... it is important even in primary.

 

Licences (Server and Office) seem ok, but you could call Pugh and Ramesys to check. Ordering and Handling ... a bit of a naff fee really, but they have to make money somewhere. I would have thought it was rolled into other parts ... but I will get to that in a minute.

 

Project Managment - £950 ... I am presuming that this is 2 days of work. If it is only one day then you are being way over charged. Installation ... £8000 ... I've seen worse. I would suggest that you ask for a breakdown of daily costs. To migrate from NT4 to Server 2003 for around 50 machines I would say it would be a max of a week ... 5 days ... presuming it is a server they often use I would think that have a working image that can be preloaded onto it ... if not then it would take a day and a half to build and patch ... and that is being nice, take another day to migrate users and files, and another day to add clients.

 

If they are going to do training on the days ear-marked for installations then you don't pay for the install on those days ...

 

I am presuming that the Edictnet product is some sort of user management tool or server managment tool they use?

 

One of the other things I don't see is any information about warranty ... either for the hardware or for the service.

[titch]

warranty is an extra 5833 for 3 years, more crazy figures. I assumed the server would come with a spare drive raided for backup? if not then i guess well have to buy a tape drive or something.

 

You were right the edictnet is a user management tool, not sure how good it is, i think its likely some sort of copy of the one that ships with rm servers.

 

Although very tempted to do the job myself i think i probably am a bit too much of a newb, and although asking someone from the local schools to help would be nice, i dont want to have only them as a bakup if things go pear shaped.

 

So guys, Ive emailing RM tomoz, if anyone nos any other good companys that offer decent support then feel free to post them up. Ill get back on here with the qoutes if people are interested?

 

Thanks for all the help people

[apeo]

So guys, Ive emailing RM tomoz, if anyone nos any other good companys that offer decent support then feel free to post them up.

 

Not sure everyone would class RM as a good company that offers decent support

[Midget]

Have you tried NSOptimum? As long as you don't get network cables installed by them (although the offenders have been sacked), they are a good company and have very knowledgable Network Engineers and 3year warrenty

[localzuk]

I would suggest that you get in touch with some other companies ASAP, those figures are way OTT for a school. An example:

 

We had, last year, 3 new servers to replace 2 old servers (with one being a nas box for backup). This cost us £6k for the servers and installation which included moving everything AD from the old to the new. Ok it was only 2003 - 2003 transfer but it took 2 days altogether. For what you want, it should not cost £8k simply for installation.

 

I would suggest contacting European Electronique, as they seem to provide excellent service and good prices.

[CHR1S]

Isnt support for a HP server only around the £1000 for 3 years?

I would say a week is generous for install as well maybe 3-4 days at most for someone who knows what they are doing. Even at 4 days £2000 a day or £250 p/h seems a little steep

 

Also for that £ you should be getting 3 quotes minimum so you will get an idea once the other quotes come in.

[localzuk]

Edenalig - next day onsite 3 year warranties are included as standard with all the HP servers I've bought (DL360's).

[bishopsgarthstockton]

blooming heck... hell i will install the bugga for £800..... sounds to me like they dont want your business

[CHR1S]

Edenalig - next day onsite 3 year warranties are included as standard with all the HP servers I've bought (DL360's).

 

See even better £5000 for 3 years warranty

[maniac]

Try calling Viglen for a quote, I had a quote simelar to this at my old school, that was for a new server, 30 new workstations, all installation, 1 years support and all their fancy classlink plugins etc.

 

It ceratinly does sound excessive for what they're doing. Golden rule here, shop around! There are many more companies capeable of supplying and installing ICT in schools, not just RM.

 

Also make your choise wisely. It sounds as if you're at a junction for ICT in your school, so which ever route you go down now you'll be stuck with for the next few years certainly. Get each of the companies you're interested in to demo their systems to you, most of them can do this and are more than happy to. That way you can make a more informed decision rather than just going by price.

 

I heard the name NSOptimum mentioned above. I've had bad experiences with this company. They're more than happy to sell you the equipment, but when it comes to after sales support I found them to be very poor. (This is my opinion, they may have improved since I last had dealings with them over 2 years ago)

 

Mike.

[projector1]

I would suggest that you get in touch with some other companies ASAP, those figures are way OTT for a school. An example:

 

We had, last year, 3 new servers to replace 2 old servers (with one being a nas box for backup). This cost us £6k for the servers and installation which included moving everything AD from the old to the new. Ok it was only 2003 - 2003 transfer but it took 2 days altogether. For what you want, it should not cost £8k simply for installation.

 

I would suggest contacting European Electronique, as they seem to provide excellent service and good prices.

 

agreed

always get a few quotes as one supplier may offer you more for your money. (you need three quotes anyway with our LEA)

another benefit is th fact that as you are spendning so much they suppliers will do their best to undercut competition thus you may save a few quid.

I have Stone computers, RM and Dell coming in soon to provide us will solutions to our current IT issues (storage, redundancy, etc)

 

Just as you would at home always get more than one quote i saved £300 quid when moving on solicitor fees !

[Pottsey]

If your edict is anything like our Edit in Nottinghamshire I can believe that type of price. I take it Edict is like Edit and you don’t need 3 quotes either?

 

When we got a quote from edit they wanted to change half the work stations with a very high minimum spec, change the wireless points and rewire the cabling so all the cables go directly to the main cabinet without switched around the building. The price also covers online backup at least it did for us. They also said it would be a 10day install.

[ruggie_uk]

You can get a decent spec server from Dell with 3 year next day warranty for about £2,000, less if you can scrimp on some parts. Not that I'm recommending Dell but that's what they have. Lowest was around £400.

Don't forget to buy your licence yourself though as it will be cheaper than what they quote for it. Some companies still try and charge you £600 or so for a server licence when we can get it cheap via educational suppliers. We use Ramesys for licences.

 

Install it yourself, if you have the time. It isn't terribly difficult if you are experienced in IT and if you haven't done it before will be a good learning opportunity.

 

Another benefit is that it will be set up 'your way' and you will know your way around it better and be more comfortable supporting it.

[wesleyw]

If you want good support I'd use Stone Computers the hardware is well priced and the support is fanastic. As for the management software you could use RM CC3, CSE, Classlink there are many to choose from!

 

 

Wes

[Stese]

Titch...

 

This looks like a typical EdICT thing... they tried to do it to us a few years ago, and wanted £200k for a Vanilla MS network with a fancy log-on screen and no admin access! (this was the early years of EdICTNET)

 

We went with viglen instead, and have thrown them out as well.

 

If you'd like to chat about it, drop me an email Steven DOT Davison AT rmays.hants.sch.uk

[lovelldr]

Have just purchased new server for our school. It is a Poweredge 2900, 4gb ram, 2x73gb sas drives for raid1, 4x146gb sas drives for raid5. 2x5140 2.33ghz xeon processors. Came to about £2500. With all the licenses on it (server 2003, sql 2005, exchange 2007, cals etc) it added another £700 on top. Add on to that a ups system, another £200. Say basically, it all came in at £3500, and will be installing it myself. So there goes my summer holiday. Although it came in early, and now I just want to go ahead with the installation and migration of it. But best wait till all the little brats have left