carepacks/extended warranty pack opinions

wijcc

wijcc

wijcc

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Hey guys :)
What are your opinions on carepacks/extended warranty packs. Do you guys take out these on your servers. I have a HP Proliant ML570 G2 server which is quite old. But is still used as the primary server. I have in the past religiously taken out the carepacks on it. But have over the years only used the carepack once to replace a array controller battery (cost less than £100). The carepack costs £1000~ a year. Would you renew it or not bother with it?
The only postive thing about the carepack is the 24 hour service level if anything goes wrong.
Thanks in advance guys :)
 
HP G2 servers are indeed getting on abit now, id personally look to replace the server if budgets allow. However, HP aftercare is very good and if the part is in stock its normally replace in less then 24 hours.

Normally id buy a 3yr care pack with the servers and look to replace the servers after 3 years if budgets allow.
 
I work for a small company so buying a new server is not an option.. unless absolutely necessary.. I guess I will be renewing the carepack incase of failure of a major hardware item.
 
wijcc said:
I work for a small company so buying a new server is not an option.. unless absolutely necessary.. I guess I will be renewing the carepack incase of failure of a major hardware item.
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What applications does the server run?

If the buget does not allow for new hardware, a carepack goes without saying. IMO.
 
it is used as a domain controller, websense express and Goldmine and also as a shared network drive.
 
You could easily replace that, with 3 years warranty for less than the cost of the carepack.

However, if you dont want to replace for risk/resource reasons, look at third party support companies
 
well its carepack renewal time again... the server which is nearly 10 years old now and still going.
A 3 year carepack with a 3rd party supplier is £1000~ for another 3 years.. would you guys renew the service contract?. Buying a new server is not possibility while the current one still work...
 
wijcc said:
Buying a new server is not possibility while the current one still work...
Click to expand...

The day a component that's hard to source goes wrong in your 10 year old server will be the day you find out about all the exclusions in your contract, that's suddenly not worth the paper it's written on.

Honestly, that sort of thinking is pure folly. Get a new server.
 
i will look at the small print of the service contract to see what is exactly covered... the decision to replace the server with a new one is not in my control unfortunately.
 
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How much time would be lost if the server was off line for more than 5 days ?

As at that age, as has been pointed out spare parts will be hard to come by, and then the support firm are not going to buy you a new server if they cant source a replacement. That will be down to you, and the downtime associated with the procurement.

Then how do you get your data off the 10yr old server that is dead in the water ?

Replace it whilst its still operational.
 
Another point is that you may have a contract which says a response in X and a fix in Y hours/days but if the service provider can't find parts, what happens? They would probably be in breach of SLA / contract and thus have to pay some sort of penalties, but I doubt that would help a business dead in the water with key applications offline. If this is the only server in the business, would you survive a week with nothing working?

As an example, I've just found a Dell R410, dual E5530 2.4Ghz Quad Core, 24GB RAM, 4 x 1TB, PERC6i RAID and Dell 3 year, 4 hour same day 24/7 warranty for £1099+VAT. It might be a little 1U box compared to the beheamoth of the ML570 but even the older Xeon E5530s are going to offer much more performance than the Xeon MPs.

Add a Windows Server license if you want to migrate or you could do stuff ESXi free on the Dell, and do a quick & dirty P2V from the HP to the Dell (usual caveats about P2Ving a DC allowing)...

I do feel your pain though - I see similar attitudes with some of our customers. I've been chasing one customer for ~18 months about server replacement - they've been openly told they have no hardware warranty and we'd be scouring ebay for parts if something dies. What adds to the frustration is they were bought in the late 2000s for 600 million USD and the ultimate parent company is worth circa 4 billion USD! Getting them to spend £20k on essential (IMHO) new kit and upgrades has been such hard work :mad:
 
These days we normally buy HP Servers with 5 year carepacks.

The pair of DL380 Gen 8's I just bought were only about £6.5k each with 5 year 4hr response HP support, and these are well specced machines for our VMWare stack. If you're paying £1k a year just for support on an old machine, it's only an extra £300 a year for a new server every 5 years.

We had a 5 year old Dell 1950 as a domain controller, just got a 3 year support quote which was about £2k from Dell. Bought a brand new R420 with 3 years support for £2050.
 
We buy 5yr warranties with servers, if they still have a business justification after that we get a third party HW warranty, miles cheaper than Dell and HP etc, yes, it's parts only, but all our guys are trained anyway, so swapping kit out isn't an issue. The cost? Averages about £100 per server for a 4hr part shipping contract on some and a NBD on others.
 
I buy 5 year care pack and then the different level of care eg 13/5 NBD or 4 hours etc. But replace that 10 year old server!
 
this is a 3 year third party warranty pack.. at £805+VAT for 3 years... I am waiting for the supplier to email the summary of what is covered by the carepack.
 
So £805 for the next three years = £2400.

For £2400 you can get a shinny new modern more energy efficient server for that, and even pay for it over three years with dell.
 
You want to continue running that junk for the next 3 years? wow.... just wow.

What OS is it running? Take into consideration that Server 2003 is going end of life in July 2015.
 
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