Magnus Hagander wrote:
> Ron St-Pierre wrote:
>
>> Joe Uhl wrote:
>>
>>> I realize there are people who discourage looking at Dell, but i've been
>>> very happy with a larger ball of equipment we ordered recently from
>>> them. Our database servers consist of a PowerEdge 2950 connected to a
>>> PowerVault MD1000 with a 1 meter SAS cable.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> We have a similar piece of equipment from Dell (the PowerEdge), and when
>> we had a problem with it we received excellent service from them. When
>> our raid controller went down (machine < 1 year old), Dell helped to
>> diagnose the problem and installed a new one at our hosting facility,
>> all within 24 hours.
>>
>
> 24 hours?! I have a new one for my HP boxes onsite in 4 hours, including
> a tech if needed...
>
> But I assume Dell also has service-agreement deals you can get to get
> the level of service you'd want. (But you won't get it for a
> non-brand-name server, most likely)
>
> Bottom line - don't underestimate the service you get from the vendor
> when something breaks. Because eventually, something *will* break.
>
>
> //Magnus
>
Yeah the response time depends on the service level purchased. I
generally go with 24 hour because everything is redundant so a day of
downtime isn't going to bring services down (though it could make them
slow depending on what fails) but you can purchase 4 hr and in some
cases even 2 hr. I had a "gold" level support contract on a server that
failed awhile back and within 3 net hours they diagnosed and fixed the
problem by getting onsite and replacing the motherboard and a cpu. I
haven't had any of our 24hr support level devices fail yet so don't have
anything to compare there.
If you do go with Dell and want the higher support contracts i'll
restate that a small business account is the way to go. Typically the
prices are better to the point that a support level upgrade appears free
when compared to the best shopping cart combo I can come up with.
Joe
