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Equipment Suppliers You Can Trust?
Steve Gray asks: "It has happened to all of us at some time or another. You're two weeks from deploying an application, but suddenly your testbed server falls over, and just won't get back up. After fighting with a variety of companies to try and get parts delivered for Tuesday, I'm finding that most companies will stall your order for days for reasons from random extra checks through to migration of lesser known species of Vole, business needs be damned! Who do Slashdot readers turn to when technology goes wrong? Do you trust them to deliver by tommorow, without fail?"
When I worked for people with a clue there were always redundancies and spare parts. Now shops seem to run like the Petroleum Companies (claim to, anyway) and that is heavy dependence on JIT delivery of goods. Overnight is about the best CDW or anyone else seems to promise anymore.
Gawds. We used to have actual Field Service contracts which guaranteed two hour response time, and that meant someone was on site in two hours, not returning a call within that time.
I suppose HP and IBM still offer such, but if you're on anyone elses PC's or servers then you've dug your own grave.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Duct tape.
If something critical breaks and we need standard(ish) parts then we bite the bullet and drive 30 miles to Scan, who in general have most stuff in stock.
Yeah, you pay a slight premium but it's worth it. I suppose you may want to consider next day on site repairs from the manufacturer as part of an extended warranty or service agreement.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
Dell still offers good service on thier servers with about a 4 hours turn-around if you're willing to pay for the service contract.
"We were half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold."
-- Hunter S. Tolkien
I trust newegg.com. Prices are cheap and they ship very quickly--depending on what shipping you purchase. I haven't had any trouble with them though.
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
I prefer local small businesses, they need you maybe more than you need them.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
If you pay, the offensive amounts of money they ask, they even will code for you...
On the other hand, Keep a small stock to be out of troubles your self.
2 o 3 spare hard disk, 1 GB ram, the hardware you need and the bugdet you have...
If is that important backup equipment, redundancy, etc, and always, have 2 or 3 plans of action. Even if you get a 100% next day whatever-you-need replacement, you still need the plan b, and c...
Check tue bussines continuity plans and risk managment theory, you will get pretty good ideas of what to do... isnt so hard.
Â_Â
But then, I'm not willing to pay them the oodles of money for a support contract, so my trust is largely irrelevant - I'm not buying anything from IBM anyway :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We used to have actual Field Service contracts which guaranteed two hour response time, and that meant someone was on site in two hours, not returning a call within that time
Well I don't trust these field service contracts too much, unless I know the supplier has local or regional stock. I've seen it way to often recently, these companies (HP, Dell, EMC) can get you an engineer on site in 2/4 hours, but the spare parts might take a lot longer than the agreed time.
Tell your supplier that you've found another supplier that offers guaranteed on-time delivery for less expense than the current one. You'll soon get that overnight delivery you ordered 4 weeks ago.
It may be costly, but if its a hard drive, going to staples and picking up a power supply or a hard drive just long enough to keep things breathing, can be an option. Or, if its a motherboard, sometimes a MA and PA shop, there just to grab a MOBO or proc, to get you back for a day or two. But then, when the dust settles, go to your normal supplier, to get the things you really need. I'm a NEWEGG fan, but Tiger is good for cheep ish.
Well if it isn't the leader of the wiener patrol, boning up on his nerd lesson...
I always found Crucial to be a good supplier for memory bits and bobs (no personal link, just a satisfied customer), but so far I've been lucky with serious hardware (touch wood). Where I work, the tendency is to throw old stuff and buy completely new, but then it's hardly mission critical.
We've also got piles of old boxes that aren't used and can be press-ganged into service if needs be. Not ideal, but it helps over tricky periods. Hmm, come to think of it, that could be why I'm not allowed to put them into a Beowulf cluster for tinkering around with on my statistics work...
bang goes my karma... again...
Hot spare.
Without a DRP for the server before it goes into production you are asking for trouble. The old adage of not if it fails but when it fails is just as true today as it was yesterday.
Even before CDW started researching wormholes, there was Einstein Express - when it absolutely positively has to be there the day before yesterday.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
As much as I hate to admit it, Dell's parts department kicks ass. It took some doing, but we're now part of their Warranty Parts Direct program and can order ad-hoc parts to be overnighted to us. I ordered 4 motherboards last Thursday and they were here on Friday.
Our dedicated farm of Dells numbers just about 1200 servers. Initally, we had to wrestle with them over every little disk and stick of RAM. Eventually, we just had to tell their support tech what we needed, and they greased the approval skids, shipping things out the same day. Now that we're WPD, we can do it online ourselves. It took me about 10 mins to order the mobos the other day.
...you can get someone that english like a native.
Just tell your boss, that next time things break down you could either have spare parts ready ($3,500.00) or waste another two days of the companies & customers time ($???,???,???.00).
That should do the trick.
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
I know there's a lot of animosity towards them out there, but if anything's ever gone bang in a Dell server, then I have to admit that - as a manufacturer - their business support is superb. We've had 2 SATA drives and 1 SCSI drive fail over 3 years and all have been replaced within 4 hours without any call center "try this" problems, or any arguments.
To be honest, it's one reason I'd still buy them. I love their decent business service. The engineers they send out know their stuff and I can let them get on with it. I don't have to play telephone tennis, just phone them, quote my service tag, tell them what's wrong and I'm looking at an engineer on the doorstep in 4 hours. I've even had one trun up at 10 p.m. at night - that was impressive.
Having said that, I can't say exactly the same for their home PC helpdesk support. My best advice is to ask them to make a note saying that you're technically competent against your record, that way, if anything goes wrong, you get escalated to a L2 tech guy, and they're normally happy to just do a parts exchange via courier and let you install it.
http://www.mwave.com/
aria
http://www.aria.co.uk/
they have always been a safe bet for me they will even have it next day if you order it fast enough in the morning without the nextday option
I cannot praise Dell's 4 hour part and labor service contract enough. It is a bit expensive, but if you're absolutely dependent on any given machine and it has no backup, then the service plan is indespensible. If something goes wrong on the machine (generally indicated by the little green light on the front blinking amber) you can call Dell and they help you determine what is broken in the machine (if this is not already known). They then will have the parts and a service technician out to your site within 4 hours.
This came in particular use when one night a harddisk failed in the RAID array on a machine we were using. I called at 7pm and by 10pm they had the replacement to us, which was hot-swapped in and life went on.
have just one production server if you business depends on it. Always have at least two. This way if primary server fails, you should be able to get by (and plan this ahead of time) using the secondary server. This will give you some breathing room to get the primary one fixed (and keep you from getting fired). This applies to all production components, be it servers, switches, or RAID arrays.
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
I bought a DVD burner and a TFT screen from www.scan.co.uk, the drive arrived fine, but i got a £10 pc case instaed of the TFT. after what must have been an hour i finally got through to someone who asked if i was sure it wasnt the TFT (-idiot). it took 2 weeks of phone calls (on hold for upto an hour each time) before they would finally dispatch the screen as they still didnt believe i'd got the wrong product. they didnt even apologise
-AlexC
IBM, SUN, HP and a bunch of other large vendors use a quiet company called Akibia for their parts and first and second level support. I suggest that my clients buy parts only contracts from them. The cost is really reasonable and they have yet to disappoint after many years of failed disks and power supplies.
I have never had a problem with HP getting me spare parts. Call them, explain the situation and have a qualified, understandable tech on the phone with me. Last week we had a drive fail in a client's SAN...
Call HP, talk to guy and within 5min the drive was being sent out. Arrived the next morning even though they said a couple days.
If I was doing mission critical stuff I would have no problems going with HP.
That said if down time is not an option a supply of spare parts is probably a good idea.
Let the Astroturfing BEGIN!
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
I have had very good experiences with Dell technical support.
Note that their business support and desktop support divisions seems to be totally separate. I have never been routed to anyone I have had trouble understanding in the least, once I enter the express code for a business piece of equipment. Home computers are another story.
If you have "Gold" or "Platinum" service, where they have 4-hour response for equipment you get transferred to a separate department. I've never had that phone ring more than twice before talking to someone and getting parts swapped out almost immediately.
Fast, courteous & efficient has been my experience with them over the last 2.5 years.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
ALWAYS have a spare of any component you can't purchase locally. Large PS, drives, especially mainboards. Nothing is worse than trying to deal with a mainboard swap on a critical machine if you have to switch chipsets. Double the system ram so you can handle a single stick failure without any hiccups.
If you're dealing with high end equipment on a critical machine you might even be able to justify a spare machine. IF you can't why didn't you buy two lower end machines?
If you're relying on overnight shipping you've got a seriously flawed plan imo.
They have never let me down ...
http://www.pcconnection.com/
http://www.macconnection.com/
...is 2 or 4 hour on-site. So far I've found IBM is the best about having the parts and getting on-site quick. Dell has a bad tendency to send the wrong parts (once you finally get someone to agree to come out), and then take too long to come out. If it's something I don't have on-site for, or is out of warranty, CDW usually gives it to me pretty straight as to whether they have what I need, and how quick they can get it to me.
Both of them have always come through for me.
jh
Yes, and send someone who knows what to do whether it's a drill or a real failure.
One place where I used to work, a drive in a RAID array failed. No problem, they sent the new kid to replace the drive--easy to tell, it was the one with the red light in the middle of the array. But being the anal-retentive organizer he was, he decided to MOVE THE OTHER DRIVES OVER so the new one would be at the end. That took the array offline of course and totally confused the controller once it did see the new drive. For more than a week they claimed the data loss was due to a "rare double-drive failure".
Oh, and of course they lost several days worth of data because the last two tape backups wouldn't restore and the heads hadn't been cleaned for six months, but you could have guessed that.
I trust no one but Sony.
Now there's an honest, reputable, and sincere company!
I used to check pricewatch and then go from there but more and more I have been seeing that the companies listed as cheapest in pricewatch have very bad track records. This also applies to many stores listed on pricegrabber and other price comparison websites. For that reason I have been using resellerrattings a lot. They list stores and have feedback from users saying how their experiences were. Then again, even with the "trusted" suppliers, the quality of your purchasing experience can vary a lot.
Well, we hunted around for months trying to find one of these for our A3 scanner. Lots of places promised to ship, but nothing ever arrived. You got the distinct impression that somewhere on the other side of the world, they were firing up the factory just to make one for us.
However, we placed a call with Bechtle Direct (European, and nice and cheap for ink and toner btw) and got one in a week. That may sound like a long time, but at least we didn't get the usual 'bend-over to please' BS some suppliers fob you off with - we'd been looking for one of these since October.
All in all a difficult part to find, sourced and delivered with 5 working days. Very, very pleased.
I've been doing business with them through three employers, for almost 15 years.
And for the record, I'm talking about CDW
If they have it in stock, they WILL deliver, overnight if you need it that bad, and they stand behind their stuff. They have great relationships with their suppliers as well, so if you need pre-sales support, they can make that happen as well.
We (current company) sole-source our COMPAQ stuff through them, and I do not know of a single complaint. Once you have established an account, and done some business with them, you end up with a dedicated account team. I have been dealing personally with the guy who heads our team since 1997.
Recommended......
-RED
When something dies, HP usually have the part to us the next day. CDW can also get us things very quick since we are in Chicago.
If you can't have spare parts on hand, then a local vendor (or multiple ones, and make sure you know the days/hours they're open!) is your only 'guaranteed' hope. And that's assuming they have what you need onhand at any given time.
Spare parts are always best, obviously. Test them before you stick them in the spare parts bin, though.
I'd recommend those above. Basically all large vendors offer taylored support contracts for large accounts, and standardised suzpport for smaller shops.
HP for instance has quite a number of different options available as seperately purchaseable support packs, including a pretty expemsive one with guaranteed time back so service (most vanilla support contracts only guarantee reaction time or appearnace time on site, leaving you with a residual though small risk that the necessary part may take longer to arrive).
You do plan your systems for a well defined service level, do you ? Else, someone should maybe start doing his job. Often a spare server is a cheaper alternative to high level support contracts - we often go this route. But keep that spare a spare - if you live in the kind of shop that happens to find its spare server miracolously doing mission critical work after a few months, you'd be better off to buy support from professionals.
DELL!! 4HR depots all over the world. Warranty Parts direct, Silver, Gold, and Platinum levels depending on your business needs. Heck, you can even have an onsite parts closet if you like.
I wonder how many of these posts will be lacking a 'Full Disclosure' announcement... or have a false one?
I guess this is a Create-Your-Own-Slashvertisement?
When our computer equipment breaks down, I like to go to a specific local store. They're 5 minutes away, carry quality parts at very reasonable prices, cheap "off the boat" parts are nowhere to be seen, they have a good return policy, and they speak ENGLISH. (This is more of a concern than you'd imagine, in a big city.)
My boss, on the other hand, likes to go to Tiger Direct and buy the cheapest crap they have on the shelf.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Kinda at the end of the thread now, but better than top posting in a reply. I always use Provantage when I can. They have a pretty extensive stock, good prices, and good shipping. Haven't had a need to call their customer service or return an item so I'm not sure how well they are there, but so far satisfied. Fast at shipping too when you need something overnight. http://www.provantage.com/
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
Recently I ordered a whole media box for a customer worth around $2000 from tigerdirect and I needed it fast fast fast. It came on time, but my heart attack came when I checked my bank. They charged twice, docking my account almost $4000 (they were nice enough not to include shippping in one). After going through many zombies I finally got a rep that could tell me what the hell was going on. Apparently it is a hefty sum and they decided to 'freeze' the sum of my purchase and then proceeded to charge for the same sum + shipping. I had to mess with this for a week before I could pay my damn bills. However this taught me a good lesson that I should have already had in high school. Never underestimate the value of human contact. Yeah we're all nerds and want to stay away from the Worst Buy commission gangs on sugar highs trying to sell you this nice wireless bluetooth toothbrush with mp3 player and a free headset, but when it comes down to it, somebody has to be responsible for whatever happens to your order. Can't blame the server BSODing in the middle of your order and charging you again after coming back online because someone didn't know what a friggin mutex is. But the best way to avoid all this is to forget the online stores and get the critical stuff locally, personally. If anything happens, you got someone to point your finger(choose carefully) at, even if its yourself.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
HP will sell you 24 X 7 X 365 critical systems support with a guaranteed maximum call-to-repair of 6 hours.
I wonder what the monetary value of this story is? It's essentially free advertising for companies on a website filled with nerds who order lots of equipment online and have no qualms about doing so.
I like newegg.com - and I wonder how much revenue they get directly attributable to this story and this comment.
> Who do Slashdot readers turn to when technology goes wrong?
Dell.
> Do you trust them to deliver by tommorow, without fail?"
Yes.
There is a reason why they are such a big and popular supplier, and it isn't due to suspension of disbelief. Of course, you may need to have favourable terms in your contract to get the kind of service you want, as they probably don't offer it to every little company around.
If you are doing anything mission critical and don't have spares onhand I don't see how you could possibly blame the supplier when something fails. Everything will eventually fail, thats why we have warranties/extended warranties. Spending an extra few hundred on the parts that fail the most like harddrives for example should be a requirment. In addition to that if the server is critical and downtime is not an option then you should be paying for an uplifted contract. Most companies will offer various repair times like 2hours, 4 hours, 6 hours etc, if you are willing to shell out the cash. If not then you should accept the standard warranty and live with it. (ps. sorry if I sound bitter and jaded but I work tech support for one of these big companies and I am pretty tired of listening to people complain they won't get the part until the next business day and when I offer them an uplifted warranty they get angry they have to pay more )
always do like NASA, and buy the spare parts you need from ebay
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
As the years have gone on with thousands of different machines out there from just one vendor alone, it's difficult for any one vendor to stock everything. On my ISP side, I keep spare parts of any mission critical components I have in place. IE RAID controllers, RAM, CPUs, motherboards, and NICs (not so much a problem these days with dual NICs on most server boards. But that's also my own preference since we custom build here and my equipment is required for 24/7 operation. To me it doesn't matter if I don't use the part before I decom the server, I had it just incase. It's a peice of mind thing even if it was a $1000 card.
As a Whitebox manufacturer, if someone is building a server for a specific need that is 24/7 operation, I might even recommend to them to consider buying redundant/spare parts. Problem is I might get taken up on that option 1 time out of 100. People don't want to spend money when they don't have to. They've relied on the computer manufacturer building a quality component. But let's face it, unless it's custom built (by someone who cares and actually QAs each machine) then it's assembly line produced and thus has lower QA on it.
Part of the reason for this, I believe, is places like Dell saying "4 hour time to delivery" as an option when you buy equipment from them. They assume that EVERYONE does that. Point of fact, more often than not Dell can't/won't do it either.
The other part is....god forbid the all mighty dollar. "Why should we spend $1500 to have spare parts lying around that we may or may not need?" "We have 100 servers, that would be $150k in parts that will probably never be used. That's just too much, forget spare parts." That's where bighats with small brains should leave it to the IT dept. to deal with. 100 servers...what's really the odds of all 100 of them going down at once AND it being the same components? I mean really. Having 2-5 spares of each component is all that's needed. If you're not using close to or the same arch for each box, that's another issue and things like this should have been considered.
Either rate, if there are mission critical services running, not keeping parts available is playing russian roulette. We spend hundreds of thousands a month on redundant 'net lines, we backup our data daily, we even keep it off-site. But god forbid keeping spare parts available.
Have two machines and load-balance between them. That way, the "spare" isn't "wasting space" (as far as the PHB is concerned), when things are going well you get double the performance, you have no downtime switching servers when one fails, and because you're placing half the stress on each machine, you more than halve the risk of a failure.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Do you trust them to deliver by tommorow, without fail?
Depends whether I've paid them to deliver by tommorow, without fail. Most of these "Ask Slashdot" types want to pay the lowest possible fee, and wonder why service is noticbly less than next door who pay 4-5x as much.
It's always want want want, but I won't pay for it. Asking a million ppl won't help cuz nobody's going to give you $2 service for $1 pay.
...I'm finding that most companies will stall your order for days for reasons from random extra checks through to migration of lesser known species of Vole, business needs be damned!
Can someone please translate that into a sentence? Seriously... I can wade through some of the typical grammatical errors, but come on...
IBM have come through every time for me. They even call you before *you* know what's happened, as long as you've set everything up right.
Just remember to purchase that 4 hour response warranty...
We build extra systems suitable for replacement as needed, and then either swap parts or replace the entire system as needed.
The main advantage to having these extra systems is that you have the opportunity to test backups by restoring to them as often as you like (the more frequent, the better).
Another advantage is that we can test updates, upgrades, and new software on the extra system and test it before implementing in the production environment.
The Lumber Cartel, local 42 (Canadian branch)
British Columbia, Canada
His lips are moving.
Exceptions to this rule: PBFix in San Luis Obispo (sells PowerBook Parts, and has a decent stock of parts); CDW isn't bad, and CompUSA can often turn things around quickly.
Otherwise, the big seven all have parts/SLA agreements that you can buy. The only one I trust anymore is IBM.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Been using sparco and cdw for years. both deliver, and sparcos live availability by warehouse helps knowing when they can get it to you.
Do you trust them to deliver by tommorow, without fail?
Heck, I don't even trust them to spell "tomorrow".
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
It's not just because I work there. . . but we (AnySystem.com) do Sun and we do it well. We have a huge warehouse full to the brim with Sun gear (yes, ancient AND new SunFire) - we do straight sales, as well as leasing, maintenance, hardware and software support and if you look us up on ebay, our reputation is second to none. Please check us out and drop me a line (x122)
.) </shameless plug>
Oh and we're right across the river from Manhattan. Can't beat that with a bat. -Dave x122 (PS> We also do IBM, HP/Compaq, Dell and EMC, but admittedly, our specialty is Sun..
No one has mentioned ZipZoomFly... free 2-day Fedex with decent prices. Just hope you don't have to do a RMA.
(Score:6 F---'n Funny)
If you want something at an el-cheapo price, then order Newegg.com, zipzoomfly.com, or any of the lowest price listers on pricewatch.com..
But, if you don't mind getting ripped off for the part, order CDW. There's a reason they charge nearly 30% more than anywhere else - they'll send you what you want right away.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Having spair parts is the best policy.
The other side of the coin though; is having a good remote administrator that can determine if it is hardware or software. If he can not; hopefully he can tell the field engineer on site what has changed recently in a straightforward, intelligent way.
Example:
Remote guy: Our backups do not work.
Field Engineer: What has changed?
Remote guy: Nothing. We never tried a backup.
I have been in this situation about ten times so far.
I want my! I want my! I want my Eee PC!
As someone else have said, it's not a bad idea to just stock up, depending how your business works. We usually keep a small supply of components around just in case. Even with "next day" service, it could still take a few days if someone screws up and don't have the parts. You can yell at them all you want after but that won't help the situation at hand.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Stellar folks!
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
Asus might have some kick ass boards, but the QA in their repair department sucks. I sent in a system, and it came back worse than when it went in. When I let them know about it, I had to wait another week to get a response. When they sent the system back, it was missing parts sent in. Oh, did I say that they didn't repair the problem in the first place? And the number of hoops you have to jump through to get something (in warranty) repaired... Asus is NOT on my shopping list ever again.
The best bet, regardless of where you actually buy the hardware, it to stick with major manufacturers, a 3 year replacement cycle, and product lines designed for enterprise use. It may cost a little more, but it's worth every penny. Never try to deal with RMA'ing parts with your reseller - it's always a disaster.
As much as possible - which is about 99% of the time, i buy HP, Dell and Cisco... Thats it. They all have 3 year warranties. As long as you keep up on the replacement cycle, everything is always under warranty, which means you never waste money upgrading pc'a or servicing equipment to keep it running.
I've got HP Proliant servers and a few larger chassis based ProCurves. The ProCurve's are better than Cisco Catalyst's IMO - cheaper, and they have a lifetime warranty - no anuual smartnet extortion). HP overnighted me a new hdd today just because one of my servers was showing a HDD SMART predictive failure... Thats right, the disk is functioning fine, and they are overnighting a new one just so it can be replaced before it does fail. Pretty good if you ask me.
Dell OptiPlex's are a pretty good value - ~$1200 for a 3.0ghz p4, 1gb, 80gb hdd, 17" lcd and gold tech suppt, which means very little hold time, and overnighting of any needed parts.
Cisco stuff rarely dies, but you can get 2-4 hour response with SmartNet if you need it. I most small to mid size businesses, SmartNet is a waste of money.
I have to give props to dell's 4 hours response the last two times I have needed to use it I got my parts with in 2 hours and I live East of Egypt. Having said that dell's regular support blows chunks. I have customers that pay us to call them. Most of the home customers that have had dealt with them are past fed up by their regular support.
For part pc parts or just something I need I have had great luck with pcconnection.com my sales guy is great. Mike is very responsive and always willing to help me out of a jam. When they ship stuff ground I often get it the next day. I could not ask for better service.
failed to reboot after a power failure, cutting off half our building
So your computer was like propping up some sort of giant guillotine? That's one way to get deadlines met!
Love em or hate em, but we've got a ton of legacy and newer Gateway servers, desktops and notebooks and we rarely look anywhere else for equipment -- call it luck, call it whatever, but given the torture we put this stuff through, it has performed very well in all facets.
That being said, when issues have come up, our support contract provides for 4 hour onsite parts replacement for most of our servers and that timeframe has been met on all but 2 instances (that I can recall), and the parts in question were very, very dated. Thankfully, we had spares onhand that were useful until the Gateway replacements arrived (and in both instances the replacements arrived the next day).
But as with anything, call them. Go over your warranty agreement. Understand what is covered and what isn't. If it isn't covered, have a backup solution ready. The one kink you leave in your chain is the one that will bite you.
Good luck.
find a supplier or two that you do trust, and that you develop good relationships with their reps.. and then REMAIN LOYAL to them. so what if the doodoo widget costs a little more there than you found from some hick on pricewatch. if you are loyal to your suppliers, they will be loyal to you, and will drop everything to get a needed part out in a rush if you need it. if they catch wind that you're buying certain things elsewhere and not from them, they may be less willing to pull all the strings needed when you're in a fix. you scratch their back, they'll massage yours.
we are a small shop in a small town, and we rely upon the relationships we've built over the last five years or so with a couple of vendors, and they get 90% of my parts business (the rest goes elsewhere because i cannot get what i need for a special order from them). if i need something, i absolutely know i will have it tomorrow. and if tomorrow isn't fast enough, my vendors (and more importantly, their warehouses) are only an afternoon's drive away (and we've made that drive a time or two over the years). if i see prices a little high from my vendors than i can get elsewhere, or another vendor is really pushing the sales pitch, i let them know.. they usually work with us on pricing issues, and we know we're getting a decent price along with the service we've trusted for years.
so, when you've got good vendors, keep them happy and they'll keep you happy.
as far as "mission critical" applications go; you cannot underestimate the value of spare equipment. whether it's a server that keeps an entire office running or just a spare workstation in an office of 50. even if it's as simple as a pre-imaged hard drive or an extra router. depending upon the customer, i include the spare equipment right into the project quotation and sell the merits of having it on hand. if they don't take the bait there and it's a substantial project, i'll just pick up a suitable spare anyway myself and keep it on hand for awhile. i can always sell it later or put it to use in the office.
I hope you're not ordering from some discount Internet mail order retailer and then being surprised when they don't jump to attention when you need help. Trimming costs the way even the best companies like Newegg and J&R and Techonweb do requires that they treat customers anonymously... even if you have purchased from them 100 times, you are still "just another customer" and can have an order held up due to minor credit card inconsistencies and such.
If you really want good service, you need to have an established, personal relationship with someone you buy from regularly. This costs more money because there's more overhead- the salary and sales commission of the person who's helping you, just for starters. If you find the right person / company and treat them well (being courteous and always going to them when you need to buy something), they will go the extra mile for you when you need it- I've had VARs lend me equipment, give me free demo units to try, and much more.
Of course, this is not a case where "one size fits all". I buy a LOT of stuff from Newegg and others because in my current job, low purchase price is usually more important than service, and I've found Newegg to be nearly flawless when it comes to shipping things when promised. What's important is to understand your real needs on the cost / service spectrum and use the right source for you.
-R
My experience is that this generally doesn't happen unless someone on Mahogany Row with more ego than brains decides to "expedite" things by calling up the people I'd cultivated a good working relationship with and screaming epithets at them.
I hope I don't get modded OT for this one...
It's not a computer supply company and my personal experiences with them have been non-commercial and always to the same address, but McMaster Carr is by far my favorite online store.
I first visited it on a recommendation of a friend; we needed very specific fittings for a potato cannon that we were building, and the parts were nowhere to be found in any of the hardware stores we drove to. I ordered the parts on a Tuesday around noon, and the parts were waiting in the mailbox the next day when I got home around 6. I think they came UPS or FedEx but it was a few years ago so I don't recall exactly. I had similar experiences with the rest of my orders from them (2 or 3 more orders). Also, most of their inventory is geared towards commercial purposes, so even though my order was non-commercial, I believe that they deal with companies regularly.
Want keyed Torx wrenches? Want a fire hose nozzle? Want an 18" long 0.25" diameter drill bit? No problem.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
That is the only thing that helps. If your equipment is critical, get one machine more or duplicate a machine you already have.
I
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Not only are their servers very well-engineered, in a worst-case scenario, my distributor can call SuperMicro and have a part drop-shipped directly to me.
For systems where I don't need that quick of turnaround, I've bought a number of Tyan Transport systems, because Opterons perform so much better than Xeons for our application - but now that SuperMicro has Opteron systems available, that's going to change. The Tyans work fine, but the design isn't nearly as good as the SuperMicros.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
2 o 3 spare hard disk, 1 GB ram, the hardware you need and the bugdet you have...
With the possible exception of hard disks, the part that is [overwhelmingly] the most likely to fail, and, several years down the road, among the most difficult to replace [because form factors will have moved on to new standards] is the power supply.
Always purchase several extra power supplies for any mission critical system.
when you need parts today or tomorrow, you'll have to go local and pick them up yourself. If you need parts fast, get them from http://www.newegg.com/ - they are the best online computer parts company I have ever dealt with. They pretty much always ship stuff out the same day or the day after you place your order, and you can pay a $3 fee to ask them to give it their best shot at shipping it the same day - they refund the fee if they can't get it out that day.
keep the last server you retired, have it ready to restore to. If other stuff like routers are important, buy a used one off ebay, test it, keep it on hand. And IBM rocks, man.
Vote Quimby!
Newegg: Prices are usually within a buck or two of best. More importantly, IMHO, is their website pricing. One of the things that causes me to recommend them is their honest pricing. The out of pocket pricing is what is in bold and the rebates and other price obfuscation is in small print (with the math done for you) if you really intend to get the rebate.
Not to long ago they tried doing what every other store does, try to deceive you with pre-calculated rebate prices in large fonts with the pocket cost in fine print. I emailed a polite letter that I was displeased with this format change and my opinion of deceptive practices and given the change I would no longer be recommending them as a supplier. They replied that it was necessary to stay competitive, especially with the price comparison sites. Nevertheless, a couple weeks later the original, honerst pricing was back in place. I doubt that my email alone was instrumental, but it put them back on my "recommended" list, plus I provide this anecdote.
CDW: Good pricing, for Chicago area great for same day pickup/delivery. If you get you order in before noon (not exact, contact your sales rep for true cutoff) their messanger pricing are on par with next day delivery. Will-Call pickup at the Vernon Hills warehouse is very responsive, I frequently place an order after 5PM on the web site and arrive just before 7PM closing and am back out the door in 10 minutes or less. If they would open an hour earlier and stay open an hour later 8AM-8PM, they would be near perfect.
Both these companies are worthy of your business.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
... why I stick with Sun equipment. Sun Microsystems have probably one of the best technical support you can buy with money (a lot of money but every cent is worth it).
My fortune 500 company only uses major namebrand qualified servers, redundant HBAs, redundant switches & fabric, EMC storage arrays, and daily backups. For service we pay for 4 hour service window. That is how we maintain 99.999% up time.
http://www.leadmagnet.50megs.com
In my experience, its just cheaper to buy 2 equal servers and have one gather dust untill the other one dies. and you are not at the mercy from any hardware supplier. Having a service contract on your hardware with a company as HP is unpayable unless you are in a business where money is plenty..
I've had same day delivery from the two local companies we use here. The customer service is bar-none the best! I swear those guys would ride it up here on a bicycle if they had to. Besides, it is always a good feeling when you pay a local business for the same products you could get elsewhere. And with the money you save in shipping, it is comparable.
And yes, even high end server components can be bought locally. Check into it.
We had a SCSI controller on one of our Dell 220S RAID arrays go bad at 0200 Monday. Unfortunately, as it died, it wrote complete garbage to the mail database and hosed it. Cyrus' recovery utilities laughed at me. I got on the phone to Dell support and swapped in a controller from an offline 220S, forced the drives online and was back up. Dell offered to have another controller there within four hours (per contract) but, since I had another spare, I told them to ship overnight. It arrived today. After restoring from Sunday night's tape, we were back in action by 1400.
The morals of this story are:
1. keep spares
2. pay for hardware support from someone who WILL support you
3. closely monitor your systems with automation
This year we are budgeted to install a SAN and set up clustered failover on critical systems, minimizing the probability of downtime. This incident served to reinforce that need to management.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
Nobody is perfect, but I've had great experiences with PC Connection for over a decade. For parts they stock, you can usually order until *2am* and it will be delivered the next day (i.e. later the same day).
My particular account manager has been fanstastic. When Airborne lost my order, she even had someone pick another order from the warehouse on a Sunday morning, and had Airborne deliver it same day (again, on a Sunday) so I could make a Monday deadline.
Technology costs money. If you require a fix within a certain time, are you paying someone to provide that fix within a certain amount of time? If not, then you have failed to plan. If you fail to plan, then of course you've planned to fail.
If you have no money, but you still want to be able to restore your system from disaster within a certain timeframe, you must of course ensure you are able to do that yourself with the parts and equipment you have on hand.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
If your a software company try to create close relationships with hardware vendors. If your starting out go for the big guys. SUN is excellent. IBM is very good. HP is very good. Dell is not interested. Small hardware companies are great when you've grown enough to make changes if they don't do well.
For device vendors (like IPS/IDS, preconfigured servers, etc...) it is the opposite. Small hardware companies, specifically local ones, are the best. They will see a benifit in your success.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
What I have found to make the difference is relationships.
If you know someone closer to your end of things, and you can work with that person, you will get far better service. In support, it's the guy who says "here's my pager number in case you have trouble with this" even if he doesn't want you to call him every time you have trouble. The flip side of this is that eventually you know which guys break more than they fix, or close tickets without even calling. Knowing the local service manager or dispatcher is a real help here, or more accurately, the more people you know, the better it gets.
In sales, you need a Rep who will work with you, and has some power. I mean the guy who says "I'll get you some of those tomorrow" and you may not even see a bill for them (although you also might be billed at the real value - you NEEDED those, right?) This is the guy you buy your redundant supplies from when things are calm, so you don't always have to rely on him dropping everything for you. This is not the guy who won't lift a finger without a signed PO.
Contracts aren't worth as much as you'd like.
I found IBM four hour turnaround time to be an exception even in the early nineties, and it hasn't gotten better. Admittedly, we were the low end of the market, but we still had a four hour contract with IBM, and it was honored almost exclusively in the breach. I have not seen anyone significantly better since then either. It just doesn't happen. I have occasionally gotten stellar support from IBM, Dell, HP, Compaq and Cisco, but that was always completely localized, never reliable with any single vendor. FedEx has built their reputation on promptness and reliability, not becasue it's easy or common, but rather because it's difficult and rare.
Let's not talk about contractors. Some kind souls cannot be bought or bound by a piece of paper. Those things only enable them to help you, as demonstrated by random arbitrary work interruptions. You may not see them for weeks at a time in the middle of an urgent job, but remember that these kind souls, martyrs really, help you stave off catastrophe out of the goodness of their hearts alone.
Ultimately, it's the people who make it happen, like the FedEx driver who scanned my package at 6:04 last night as he got into his truck, and waited while I went inside to get a piece of tape from the the counter guy who told me I was too late.
I hope you get lots of good recommendations for companies that will deliver quickly and reliably, and I'll keep an eye on this thread to see what people have to say. Meanwhile, be nice to your office manager.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
I won't buy anywhere else if I can help it. I even bought a rice cooker out of NewEgg's Home Appliances section. Out of maybe 20 different orders now, every single one of them has arrived at my door early.
If your company can't afford extended downtime, then your company can't afford to not have a service contract on your hardware. The service contract is, of course, only as good as the company behind it. That's one of the reasons for buying gear from the grown-up companies.
Most of our gear is Sun (~100 mid-sized servers, say 6CPU each on average), and production is under expensive service contracts. When something goes boom, Sun is onsite, diagnosing as necessary and repairing ASAP. Parts orders are delivered in one hour. This is how you run a business.
It's not expensive service, it's cheap insurance for the company.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Brad at LiveJournal recommends Silicon Mechanics. I know other people who have been very happy with them as well. Their hardware is reliable, their prices are great, and so is their support.
Check out this thread on his blog for more commentary.
I'm pretty sure LiveJournal handles more load than most web sites run by the average slashdotter.
shoe
There are two types of people in this world: those that categorize other people and those that don't.
Have to disagree with you on this one based on an experience I had with ZipZoomFly last week. I had something I *had* to have in two days, so I placed the order with overnight shipping, about 1pm eastern, which would give them more than 24 hours to process it. Here are the ways in which they screwed up.
1. They held my order for confirmation of the shipping address, but didn't tell me until 1pm the next day. I did nothing wrong- the address was the billing address on the credit card. I confirmed this by calling my credit card company, who told me that they didn't reject anything- the approval went through as far as they were concerned.
2. I immediately called the extension they provided in the e-mail requesting confirmation. It went straight to voicemail every time. I left a message, but heard absolutely nothing for almost two hours.
3. I attempted to reach customer service. That extsntion goes straight to voicemail as well. Out of desperation, I punched '0' for an operator. The "please visit our website" message played over and over, but at least it didn't hang up / dump me into voicemail. 15 minutes later someone finally picked up. She was unable to provide me any assurance that my order would ship that day. I canceled the order, but she was unable to provide me any sort of confirmation number or other reference proving that the order had been canceled- only "managers" could execute cancellations, and one wasn't available at the time.
Sorry, but this does NOT cut it. Even the smallest, least organized online retailers handle routine orders well when everything goes right. But if you have something time-critical, you can't depend on companies with poorly organized internal systems and insufficient staff. Clearly, ZipZoomFly falls into this category.
To provide a contrast, let me tell you what happened next. It was 3:10pm EST at this point. I went to Newegg and placed an overnight order with rush processing. This was 10 minutes after the deadline for same-day shipping. I was notified by e-mail 10 minutes later that my credit card was approved. I contacted their customer service via online chat and was talking with someone in 60 seconds, who not only confirmed that my order would ship that day, but gave me the Fedex tracking number.
THAT's the way it should work. The only reason I didn't order from Newegg the first time is the fact that they didn't have exactly the right part. Because of ZipZoomFly's incompetance, I ended up settling for a less-ideal part so I could get it on-time, which NewEgg came through on.
-R
365 weeks a year?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Did they hire you for your low UID?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Now, technically it is not their fault that they will take your fees to "service" machines you no longer use, but it seems to me that an honorable vendor ought to point out to you, once in a while, what machines are not under contract that should be, as well as which machines that are under contract that maybe should be dropped.
Example; A few years ago, when I was slumming as a sys-admin a a fortune-100 company, I (in my spare time) decided to audit what the company had contracted maintenance for... needless to say, it wasn't hard to save my annual salary's worth of maintenance contracts in un-needed maintenance. (Both hardware and software.)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
At my last assignment, we used AVID video editors exclusively. We had a 24/7 next day delivery contract with them (12K per workstation!!!)
When our server died, (more accurately, the JBOD case) we had a new one the next day.
I guess it depends on what you're doing, but in that circumstance, it pays to use the industry leader - they're number one for a reason.
I've never had any trouble overnighting and same-daying server parts; and in addition all the servers are parts and function interchangeable, so usually when something breaks I can either scavenge parts from something else, or move the service to a less used machine, and get the replacement parts in less than 12 hours.
I supposed there's cheaper options out there (actually, I'm less and less convinced of that), but Dell has been working very well for us.
sic transit gloria mundi
Disaster Recovery Plan. Make sure you formulate one, and have it in place as corporate policy for next time. I worked for a 1000 seat facility with an AS-400 system. There were two of them (second one was for backup), and not only that, we had an off-site service that had a third one in-house just in case the worst happened. Backup tapes were delivered to the off-site location every night. There was a guy who worked in the department whose sole job was to ensure that we had a continually-improved disaster recovery plan - he even ran worst-case scenario simulations. Everyon was aware of what they were supposed to do in the event of our server room blowing to kingdom come or whatever. IBM and Sungard both have great disaster recovery programs - we used them both in case one of THEM had a disaster to recover from, in the midst of our disaster.
Thay are a lot less on some thing then newegg is plus you can go to there Retail Outlet Stores to pick stuff up. one of them is connected to the warehouse so you can get any thing that is in stock.
NEWEGG.COM!
I kill harmless processes for sport
Shut up, idiot.
What geek doesn't already know about Newegg, CDW, HP, or Dell? I've had good luck with HP's service and CDW's "gotta get it there this second" shipping for in stock items. Big companies + someone willing to pay for shipping == good service. If you can drop $50 or more to have that [drive|cable|controller|motherboard|power supply|blinky light], just about everyone will give you same day service as long as the parts are in stock.
I get sick of you whiny brats. This isn't even a Slashvertisement. Notice that there's not a single link or company mentioned in the post? Notice that you're already familiar with the companies mentioned in the various posts? Nothing to see here, just good advice for a poster who needs a clue.
Get outside. Seriously.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
At work, we have entire rooms stockpiled with the stuff, as well as large buildings full of people who research and develop new tape, and even people to produce said tape. This also might have something to do with the fact that I happen to work at 3M, but that doesn't make it any less true.
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
I trust Newegg, and since I live in the Los Angeles area, shipping even with standard rate arives in 2 days, and for the next level up, over night. Newegg is my source for all computer parts, unless I have enough time to eBay them.
The original poster asks "Who do Slashdot readers turn to when technology goes wrong? Do you trust them to deliver by tommorow, without fail?" My answers are "PC Connection"and "yes". I've been dealing with them for well over a decade, and they've never disappointed. Overnight shipping for a Saturday delivery will cost you, but if they have it in stock and you order it before 3am ET it will be there the next day.
Disclaimer: I'm just a customer, not affiliated with them in any other way. And yes, I realize this sounds like a blatant plug, but they've been really good for me and I figure that they might be just as good for someone else.
I found these guys in the bay area that rock. Large scale hardware http://www.berkcom.com/ Fast shipment & EXCELLENT customer service. Unfortunately, there website really doesn't represent their inventory or quality tho.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I love you, seriously.
They pay big money to IBM for very simple services - guess what? IBM doesn't always deliver on their promise. Often actually. They are pretty let down, and I'd like to re-iterate, they have had a close partner relationship with IBM for a number of years not (at least 4) and they pump good money into IBM. IBM has dropped the ball far too many times now. They are looking for alternatives.
The fact is, you can't trust ANYONE but yourself. Have double of everything. I know that's a touchy subject with most people, because, well, that's expensive!!!
True, but I've been professionally (very) involved with the IT industry and data center industry for nearly 15 years (wow, has it been that long??!!) and what I've found is 'the best equipment' isn't always the best thing! In a lot of cases I'd rather have 'mediorce' equipment (nothing too fancy, meaning not too expensive comparitively speaking), but have DOUBLE of every critical piece of hardware.
Some may flame me, but realistically, this approach has always saved my ass. I build it into the planning of all our critical IT projects. Hardware that is (nearly) ready to go, that sits on a shelf. Hardware always ends up being cheaper than time and elaborate service/emerg contracts etc.
I don't know your position exactly, but that's my two cents. In fact, as simple and as stupid as this sounds, IMHO I think this is some of the best advice I can offer the /. crowd.
I've been bitten today however, all 3 of our internet lines SUPER slow. Bell came in and determined it's not our equipment, but theirs. They are having trouble figuring out what is going on with all our T1's. My customers are getting irritated. I put in a request to upgrade to fiber 9 months ago, they've done very little to get it up and running as of yet. Now it's affecting business in a big (bad) way! (I thought I was being pro-active and staying ahead of it all)!!
Thanks for the info. Just looking at their inventory was making me drool . . .
Maybe I shouldn't be thankful. I'll probably be spending too much money on harebrained ideas. Might even have to get out my Unit Operations class notes. Heat exchangers? Pressure transducers? Networked process controllers? Oh my.
Esa joya, esa mina y esa finca y ese mar, ese paramilitar son propiedad del Señor Matanza
This is a company that has hundreds of thousands of different parts in inventory. The online catalog pages show the current inventory, updated continually. This is Internet commerce done right. The site isn't decorative, but it has real data, like online data sheets, "related parts" lookup, pictures of parts for most of the inventory, and history data for everything you've ordered in the past.
We ordered from them perhaps fifty times during 2003-2005, and every shipment showed up on time, with no errors. No defective parts, either.
Digi-Key can be overwhelming if you're not into electronics. Here's the page for a DB-9 plug. This is one of over 3000 D-Subminiature connector parts. Click on "Technical/Catalog information", and you'll get the enginering drawings for that connector.
They even have phone tech support with a clue. I've called to ask about obscure errors in catalog specs, and was quickly connected to someone who had the data in front of them and was able to contact the part manufacturer to fix the problem.
There is no other way than to keep spares on hand.
Someone will claim you can't keep a backup of a big database server or other huge machine and the solution to that is redesign the problem so it uses several smaller and cheaper servers.
Another solution is run your disaster recovery site live.
what is your definition of advertisement. if it in anyway shape or form mentions some type of commercial activity?
man you are an idiot.
and using the word slashvertisement just further proves it.
get a life.
I really don't know how they do it. Quite often I can place an order before 10AM, and have the parts on my desk THAT AFTERNOON.
An incredible catalog, nearly everything actually IN STOCK, and friendly people who answer the phone and actually know what they are talking about. The prices are a bit higher than most other suppliers, but thye convenience is well worth it...
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
As a tech in a white box store that takes care of several small businesses in a 45 mile radius, I have some experience in this. None of our customers would be capable of paying Dell or HP for a service contract, thats whay they came to us in the first place. All servers and work stations or terminals were built, installed and networked by us, we know and have records on everything. When something goes out we get anything from ASI in Atlanta overnight. Great reps and service, and the prices are competetive, hard to beat them.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
There is a lot of value in knowing the dude down the street with the corner electronics shop when a drive or a valve in the demo fails 2 hours before said demo.
For the mechanically inclined, there's McMaster-Carr.
If you're in the same city like I was, you could order and one thousand reverse-threaded titanium compact swivel joints (real product!) would appear on your doorstep in two hours. Providing that's what you ordered, of course.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
I have a little over 20 years experience in telecom and network operations. This is how we do it:
1.) We don't do service contracts - they are way too pricey. Instead we defined common spares, hired people who knew how to troubleshoot, and did a good job of communicating who to get in touch with to fix and test each piece of gear.
2.) We are anal about using as many cookie-cutter solutions as possible. Keep them similarly configured, and you'll only need enough spares so that it is geographically feasible to get in a car and drive a part to the site in what you define as a reasonable time.
3.) Some stuff is so critical that just having common spares is not enough. Buying a second complete box to collect dust doesn't seem to work as well as you'd think it would. Someone always seems to be borrowing something from it, or you can't find it, or it didn't get the latest patch which is now critical, etc. Hot-standby, or even better, load-sharing, seems to work better. Make sure that in your N+1 configurations you are very good at know what N equals at peak times.
4.) We buy enough stuff from at least one local vendor so that if the worst happens, we can get in touch with someone who will open their warehouse on a Sunday, grab the part we need, and drive it over. That may mean you pay a little more for some of your equipment, but you still save money over service contracts.
5.) We practice changing stuff out, restoring backups, getting into our data center at 0200 when the security guard is off somewhere sleeping, etc. Our team actually comes up with tons of crazy scenarios. Then, because the team knows that we are respected and valued, those ideas get to management and planned for.
6.) We spend a ton of time documenting how well all this works, so that some new VP doesn't come along and say, "gee, look at all the personnel and CapEx in NetOps, lets outsource."
~Thom
Before their shipping department got slashdotted?
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I know this thread primarily discusses spare "computer" parts. I'd suggest that you ensure that whomever usually orders your printer toner keeps extras in the office. Heck, make it a company policy.
I've seen too many times someone who just started in an office or someone who knows nothing about the printers (and usually orders the toner e.g. the secretary) that one toner and nothing more is always enough. Then a panic situation emerges because there isn't enough toner. Or the toner doesn't work. Do you not lose more money from not keeping a spare then you did "saving" from not having a spare???
I have a lot of HP equipment, and have only good things to say about hardware or service.
sure, HP prices are not overwhelmingly great, but they will compete, even with a supply-chain company like Dell. and HP really does retain some of the good properties of the companies it used to be - my service guy is DEC/Compaq/HP, and knows his way around. in my field (scientific supercomputing) HP doesn't always have all the right answers, but they have really good guesses on most of them.
ironically, HP and Dell now use largely the same sorts of supply chains. parts are immediately drop-shipped to service staff via standard commercial couriers, for instance. any installation large enough to make sense will have pre-positioned spares. after all, it's not as if any one company has deeper insight into how to do this stuff - logistics is fairly common-sense.
HP has a lot of rock-solid, competitively fast products, but also has some real depth of experience and engineering.
I work for a large aerospace company which has 2-hour service response contracts with all major hardware vendors - HP, IBM, Sun, SGI, Dell, etc. The service is not what it used to be. Before we actually had tech reps on site. Or at least they would come over within the 2-hour window. They usually would be carrying replacement parts. The right parts.
These days our admins consider it luck if within two hours they get a service call from India. And then its the game of "find that part number in your half-assed outsourced overseas database of spare parts from every vendor in the world." They always want to know if they can just mail the part so you install it yourself, or if you want an actual field tech to come out, since you have that fancy "platinum" support plan anyway. And then they ask you how does next Thursday sound. Motherf...
Having spares on site is a good idea, but with the variety of hardware we have, it would be too expensive to cover all critical systems (and according to our DBAs and users every last stinking workstation needs to be 24x7). And even having the right spare doesn't always save the day. Here's a fun little story: A couple years ago we got a few Sun A3500 arrays (may they burn in hell). I insisted we also buy a couple replacement disks in case shit. A month later we lost three hard drives in less than 40 minutes. Go figure. After much whining Sun agreed to test the drives and found a defect.
Service is goin down; hardware quality is going to hell; prices for both are going up; and only my salary stays the same.
and the slashdot crowd is doing it's best to figure out exactly what you want... (these half duplex conversations require creative license to figure out what the real question is) well, here's my 2 cents...
hardware and OS, i've had the best experience with sun, especially if you have both sunspectrum and sunsolve. hands done, excellent response time, even if you have the silver or bronze level(4 or 8 hour) response.
OS itself, once again sun, i've also recently been impressed with redhat. i was calling on behave of a client, and the person answering the phone was the tech i worked with, no dilly-dicking around with traffickers trying to figure out who to directo your call too. not bad.
commodity hardware(x86 equipment) i'd say dell, then gateway. once you've set up a business account and done a little business, you get your company advocate, and it's actually nice to be able to talk to someone who has a record of all the shit you bought from them. their desktop/servers are BTO, but replacement parts which are RMA'ed usually ship next day.
for random components and parts, microcenter. i'm sure tiger and frye's are comparable. it's nice to be able to walk in, scan the shelves, and pick up the part you need (HD, optical, memory, mobo, etc), and if they don't have the part you were looking for, it's easy to check out what your alternatives are.
keep basic spare parts on your shelf (HD, optical, memory, power supply, usb hubs and cables) and have a decent toolkit and a bin of itty bitty spare pieces (jumpers, standoffs)...
lastly keep a few online vendors handy, with credit card or corporate accounts available for bigger ticket items.
i usually rotate between CDW, newegg, and pc/mac mall. when i absolutely need a part sometimes i'll order from a couple vendors and either keep one on the shelf as a spare, or return the extra via RMA. if you are a regular, most of these outfits won't mind(regular means more than a couple hondo a year...) if you use CDW, they often have a supply depot in major metro areas, so you might even be able to messenger/will call your parts.
last shop i worked at we had 1 spare pc, 1 spare inkjet printer, 1 spare laser printer, 1 spare mac, multiple spare monitors, a couple spare switches, 1 spare cell phone, in addition to the spare components and parts. the pc and mac had a base os install and apps suite. if we had a machine that took more than an hour to repair, we'd drop the spare in it's place and promise to return the fixed machine the next day. i also always standardized on specific brand components, i.e. seagate HD's , kingston memory, sony monitors, etc, so when swapping out components became easier to maintain.
good luck with your seach for a new vendor...
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
I cannot agree more. We buy a lot of stuff from Dell. Dell is known to have some issues with service. It's basically a purchase option with Dell -- "Do you want service to suck or not?" We always buy the Gold Tech Support, and 4HR 24x7 onsite contracts for mission critical stuff. Yah, it costs a little more, but when shit happens, we can be on the phone talking to someone who speaks English well, is eager to solve the problem, and has at least some knowledge. If we need a part, Dell will have it on our doorstop within 4 hours. If it's a city office, it's more like 30 minutes.
Service contracts for computers pay for themselves.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
... for low quantity sites (my old job would tend to buy one or two low end servers/yr before we moved to linux on commodity HW), Sun's salespeople can be a real pain to manage. Hopefully, it's just a "bad salesguy" situation, but I wouldn't blame them for focusing on higher end customers like this guy.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
One alternative to a speedy manufacturer service contract is a support contract with a local shop, like our's. That's one of the major benefits to contracting with our office. We have most everything a customer needs in-house. We give our customers a significantly lower MTTR than any manufacturer can dream of. Our service also gives our customers the ability to lower their overall support contract costs by eliminating the speedy support contracts on the lesser devices. For example standalone Cisco Catalyst chassis are covered by a lifetime warranty. Why pay for a SmartNET on each of them (or cheat and only get it on one) when you can simply rely on our stock and quick turn around to provide you with a loaner until you 10-day replacement switch comes in? It's a win win for the customer. We make a few bucks in billable hours which is still far less than what the customer would have to pay for a SmartNET. So in answer to the question of where do you get speedy replacement parts I would counter that with an alternative of a speedy support contract with a company that has a stock of replacement equipment at my disposal.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to get through the other IT people's heads (including my boss's) that the backups are the LAST RESORT in case of TOTAL FAILURE.
They are NOT a substitute for planning and maintenance.
And I am getting really sick and tired of spending weekends making sure that the backups are working and then finding out that the people doing some database upgrade didn't even bother to make a backup before they started.
When you perform miracle after miracle to save their asses time after time, they get lazy and start believing that that is the nature order of things.
"JIT" is where the company attempts to predict exactly how many parts it will need tomorrow and only order that number of parts from its vendors today.
Those vendors also practice "JIT" with the vendors supplying them with parts.
So, it all breaks down on those days when the demand is higher than any of the companies anticipated.
Warehouses cost money, storing parts that aren't needed today costs money. JIT is supposed to save all of that money by predicting exactly what will be needed and how long it will take to get it and then having the part arrive at the company Just In Time to be shipped out to you.
This is probably not going to be a popular answer here. But if something fails and I need a replacement NOW, I skip the shipping crap. My first choice is a local (bumfuck middle-of-nowhere Indiana) small PC store, but they have short hours and no weekends. Stuff always fails on weekends. Second choice is the local Circuit City or Walmart. Not a lot of selection, but they're local and Walmart is 24 hour. Third choice is Best Buy, with two of them about 45 minutes away (one north, one east). Fourth choice is a PC Club store across the street from the northern Best Buy. And if none of those will work, there's a Frys about an hour plus a few minutes north. I've had no trouble with any of these sources so long as I stick to "name" product and don't buy "Wong Foo's Fresh-Off-The-Boat And Cheapest".
The only computer stuff I've bought online or mail-order in the last year is the notebook PC I'm typing this on, because I wanted a specific model that I couldn't find stocked at any of the above places.
And I do agree with what others have said. If its that mission critical, I have spares on hand. And when you use the next-to-last spare, its time to acquire more, don't wait until you use the last one.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Replace the hardware on a regular schedule BEFORE its estimated failure date. Sure, it might SEEM like more work and expense, but you'll spend more time and money if anything ever does fail.
And the only reason I got to that was because our Windows admin's last day was Friday. For years they've been dealing with this stupid app problem by deleting/renaming the user's profile (or recreating the entire user) when 15 minutes of digging would find the real problem (the app is crap) and the best immediate solution (user gets out of that app and their ini file is overwritten by a known good one). That is, until the app can be replaced/upgraded.
And the fix is now scripted. They're acting like I'm a genius. They never thought to compare a few ini files to see what, exactly, is different between them.
Who do Slashdot readers turn to when technology goes wrong?
Slashdot!
I was working for a school and it took 2 months to get a replacement netscreen- they said it would take 10 days.
Article poster here.
:)
I did have spares for all the major components, including hard drives. However, the machine appears to have suffered a serious failure in the power supply thats cascaded forward, and the machine in question is not usually *mission critical*, but rather I'm under the thumb and this machine is making life a lot easier as the deadline approaches. Keeping a full set of spares for a high spec server is not always cost effective when you're a small/medium business. A double CPU and PSU failure, coupled with what appears to be a damaged motherboard / ram means that I'd spent the best part of a business day swapping around combinations of spares only to watch the machine fall over after anywhere from minutes to half hour, often refusing to POST after a reset and worse.
Short of keeping a hot spare of every server I use for development, theres no way I can ever avoid being in this situation. Thats why I asked my question, What I was looking for was a supplier who Slashdotters trust to get the goods out to you in the morning without fail, so in a worst case scenario you're out just one day
-Steve
For nearly all my computer parts orders, I go to ZipZoomFly.com.
I build custom PC's, so I'm running quite a bit different an operation than the usual corporate IT pro, but I really like ZZF. Their prices are, on the whole, about as cheap as one can get, the product quality excellent, and the service is most adequate.
Plus considering they offer free 2nd day shipping on most of their products, it turns out to be a good bargain. And if you spring for overnight, you get overnight. Excellent company. I do business with them whenever possible.
Unless your solution is to buy two of everything.
I LOVE newegg. I buy lots of personal stuff there. I buy lots of business stuff there. And cheap, mission critical things, I buy two of. But things that I would need someone to come in and replace immediately, well, that's just not newegg's business. Which is why they are so good at being inexpensive - the burden of support is pushed onto the customer.
In my business, I have some mission critical components and a hostile environment and a SEVERE time crunch - we print ID cards for sporting events, sometimes pushing 500 people through in an afternoon. Now, technically, I could do this with one ID card printer. But we work outside, and that means lots of dust in the air, which ID card printers don't like, so...
I own FIVE duplicate ID card printers. One goes down, we unplug it and plug in the next one. Does it suck that we've paid $7500 for ID card printers instead of $1500? Sure. But it sucks more when you've got 200 people waiting in line wanting to pay you $40 but can't because your mission-critical component isn't working.
Of course, that's nothing compared to when you have 1,000 people trying to pay you $30 online and your mission-critical system is down. We used to pay $10/month for web server space. But the reliability sucked. Now we pay 50 times that much. We have the same bandwidth and the same space, all of that extra money went to reliability because we simply couldn't risk an event shutting down at a critical moment because a critical component (our server) was out.
In most cases, it is better for you to have your own qualified staff and redundant equipment for mission-critical applications. If you're a smaller operation and a 24/7 staff isn't practical, you at least want the redundant equipment.
paintball
I've had good experience with Misco, and I'd definitely recommend them if you're in the UK. Every time I've ordered from them, they've got it to me the next day. Even when I only pay for the 3-day delivery!
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
Exactly. When you have equipment that earns you money, you pay for support contracts. When you have kit that will cost you a lot of money if you can't fix it right away, you have service contracts.
All the big name vendors in every field, Sun and HP in servers, Cisco and Juniper in networking, etc, have service and support contract options. With Sun and Cisco, you have to be within a 3 hour drive of their warehouse to qualify, Dell will sell you a 4 hour contract even if the server is on top of a remote mountain, they just don't honor it when the crunch comes.
Support contracts are just a required operating expense, like paying for electricity, or taking payroll taxes out of salaries. Sure, it looks expensive to bean counters, but to anyone with real world experience it's just a cost to be absorbed into the budget. All hardware dies. Always. Only the young, naive idiots think their hardware is somehow magical and will continue working forever.
Dell recently gave themselves a black eye on their 4 hour service. Someone in an anal-retentive data centre, where you have to fax in a signed authorisation form for every person going in or out, had a Dell guy show up 1 or 2 days too late for their 4 hour window. I was just watching from the sidelines, but it was quite a show. Server dies on the Sunday a week before Christmas, the busiest time of the year for online retailers. Customer finally gets Dell on phone Monday morning, they had accidentally redirected their support number to an answering service. They get a promise to have Dell onsite Monday afternoon, fax in the auth request, have the dead server sitting out ready to go. Tuesday about noon the Dell guy shows up, is not let into the building because the auth was for Monday. I got hooked into the discussion by the security guards because I support that network, and can authorise equipment removal. I point out that the service contract is a 4 hour response time, and the courier is responding "but its before 4". Much funnier in dutch, and you had to be there. I think the customer got 2 years support for free (or refunded) on all his servers for that fuckup, after being seen with the HP sales rep.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
say you have 6 drives, with 3 arrays. how in hell is your controller going to know what you were intending to happen if you remove the drives and randomly insert them in different positions? it's not there to second guess you, and would cause problems if it did.
LAPD: Governor rode motorcycle illegally
Schwarzenegger, who hit car with son in sidecar, lacks proper license
According to news reports, Gov. Schwarzenegger was driving without a license to operate a motorcycle. "I don't need no stinkin' license" reported the governor. See MSNBC.
If your mechanic tells you need 1 motor mount you had best find out if exactly how many the car/truck actually has, plus any kind of transmission mount that might/should be present. Because, if one of them breaks you can bet the others have been stressed and are not as strong as the use to be.
is if something does fail you can get a replacement fast from any local computer shop (granted you may have to replace the cpu motherboard and ram as a single unit). for storage redundancy there is linux software raid.
of course this doesn't help you if an hour or so of downtime on a particular box is intolerable. in that case you probablly wan't to be using proper server hardware and holding your own stock of parts.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The big three as well as reputable hotsite and support service contractors like SunGard do a great job of getting parts out according to the contracted SLA's.
But it sounds to me like the failure happened at a shop that was nickle and diming their way out of SLA support contracts. You know, the kind of place where the boss's nephew says he can build a server for half the price of the vendors, or where a bean counter "saves" the company a few thousand a year by cutting the SLAs that they "never use anyhow."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
When it comes to saving the day at a low price, the US Postal Service's Express Mail takes the grand prize. They deliver on Saturdays, for no additional cost (unlike FedEX, UPS, and DHL). They accept packages on Saturdays until early afternoon (in big cities, at least), and actually deliver them on SUNDAY -- for the SAME COST as weekday service. I don't think FedEx, UPS, and DHL even OFFER Sunday delivery as an option.
With Express Mail, you can literally ship something in the morning on Christmas Eve, knowing that one of Santa Claus' blue-clad delegates will be ringing their doorbell on Christmas morning to deliver it (and probably say , "Ho, Ho, Ho!" while he's at it).
For hobbyists who work on things over the weekend, Express Mail is a godsend. Find out that you need some part for your robot on Friday night after work, and you can have it shipped Saturday morning and arrive on Sunday.
Priority Mail is a close second, though. Faster, cheaper, AND more reliable than FedEx Ground (they really, REALLY suck... I've caught them literally lying about making delivery attempts when they were running late; once, when I was having my house worked on and had more than a dozen people mulling around the house, they claimed that "nobody was home". Bastards! They're RUINING FedEx's good name...) Best of all, with Priority Mail, if you miss the delivery on Friday... there's always Saturday. Unlike FedEx/DHL/UPS, who won't even let you go pick it up until the next business day...
I would build my own. Then you don't have to wait for parts. The idea that I have to depend on Dell to stock my parts and get them to me in a timely manner is playing with fire. But we are required to buy from big vendors so I always order duplicates. I have a 6 year old webserver and right next to it is another 6 year-old computer with the same config.
Yeah I have a production webserver running on a 6 year-old NT box. They are going to move it to central hosting "any day now". "Any day now" has been going on for 3 years. I just fix it when it breaks. Oddly, it never breaks.
No lie, one of the guys in the office has an XT. He swears it has important data on it that he wants to get off. I doubt I am going to find another 5.25 drive, much less an MFM drive.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
If it is off-the-shelf parts, CDW will overnight hardware and they're big enough that most of what they sell is in stock and available to be overnighted. I really like them. If it is server/platform specific, go back to your hardware vendor. This is where all the guys mocking us for buying from HP, IBM, Sun, or other big top hardware vendors will get burned. Sure, you can build a server for less from parts ordered off of NewEgg, and you can troubleshoot it yourself, but you won't get anything better than next-day service. But if you buy from one of the big boys you can get service contracts/agreements that offer 4-hour turnaround time. I used to work for a company that did courier work for HP and IBM. Basically, they have a nationwide network of small warehouses in most reasonable-sized cities. Odds are there is one less than 2-3 hours from you. Some of them are partnered with firms like Entex. In the city where I worked, HP, IBM, and Sun were all three located in the same building/warehouse. If you have a 4-hour contract they will have a courier drive the part out to you. If they don't have the part locally (for some reason), they will drive the part in from wherever they do have it. If it's too far to drive it, they will put it on the next available flight and have a courier deliver it to you when it lands. We did this many times where I used to work, and I have made use of this on several occasions as an end-user. If it is mission critical, you have to recognize that when the server is procured and buy it from a company that can treat it like it is mission critical.
Having a hot spare available for your critical equipment is definately the way to go. If it makes you feel better about the expense, you can use it as a test bed when it isn't torn apart. The issue that you can run into is that most manufacturers want their warranty techs (or warranty techs from a partner) to do the work.
Failing that, you should go with a service contract with a reputable company.
We get parts for our customers overnight the majority of the time (I work for an IT services company.) Sometimes things get back ordered or take an extra day because of the manufacturer, but next day is the norm.
For critical situations, like the server systemboard I put in on Monday, I can get the part drop shipped to me within four hours (it came to PA from Texas.) I'm sure the expense is pretty high, however.
Thanks -- I just tried it out, found my product (among hundreds of thousands), and placed my first order in minutes.
By far the best e-commerce website I've seen: Clear descriptions of every product, very easy to browse, and very efficient from browsing to ordering.
Shopping online always frustrates me because it's so slow, I'd almost prefer going to the store. I hope other web developers take a good look at McMaster.com.
The question SHOULD be phrased as: "How do I secure a supply of spare parts for my mission-critical systems?"
The key word is secure, which is a nonsensical term when it comes to any logistics tail that assumes perfect transportation.
In the Army, we always assumed that a variety of agents would do their level best to disrupt our logistics (other armies, saboteurs, politicians, etc), so it was a standard rule to carry around with us a spare set of the most critical parts and components needed to complete the mission.
In the civilian world, as in the military world, assuming perfect transportation in the support of mission-critical systems is an exercise in idiocy. Trucks and planes break down, warehouse managers screw up, delivery boys drop boxes, and so forth. No-one is deliberately trying to screw you, but there are still far too many opportunities for Murphy to come sneaking in. As a direct result of this realization, I brought a page with me from the Army, and have spare cables, spare switches, spare servers, etc, sitting on the shelf and ready to be grabbed in time of need.
This way of doing things may seem like expensive paranoia, but it's saved our butts more than once; the last time being when the SCSI backplane on a primary database server fried itself. HP Service guaranteed a four-hour response; they didn't show up for 26 hours. Fortunately, I had a spare DL-380 sitting here....
];)
Regards;
You are correct sir. I can account for this happening last week after coming back from holiday break. Boot up pc's after being shut down for the break, and POOOF. 2 machines power supplies dead. 1 is a Dell, which after several calls to get them to take the correct delivery information, I get the warrantied power supply. The other 1 I have to order from newegg. And to be on the safe side, we ordered an extra as spare.
Now the 2nd failure probably could of been expected seeing as it was a 300W PS running dual P4's, 2 7200rpm HD's, 1 GB RAM and a 128MB Vid card.
In my defense, I didn't put the system together. I just have to keep it running.
I only Trust Sony to install the rootkits.
When things break at our small engineering firm, our "consultant" sysadmin likes to make things himself. Why buy a cable, when you could spend 1/2 as much and build it yourself in a couple of days.
'Hey, what's that smell??'
'Oh, my $0.50 RadioShack soldering iron is burning through the box I set it on. Don't worry, the server will be back up later in the week.'
Thats fabulously proficient damage: inspired!
Did that kid make many 'errors'?
I only ask because I get to fix everyone else's PC problems, and have seen some really bad ideas and bad 'luck' by others (icluding opening a case mid operation, placing the hard drive on a live PSU and sparking arcs between them - the HDD survived!), and I am really interested in finding out if some people are prone to accidents.
My girlfriend gets electric shocks off shopping trolleys and car doors etc, and even though I build her PCs for her (now), they last half the time that mine do. Same parts, same settings..
When we first got together she had a PC that she had built where every component and setting was one step up from mine that benchmarked at 2/3 the performance of mine. To this day I cannot see why, when mine had bigger bottlenecks.
I sometimes wonder if she is doing something inspired..
Is there any way of avoiding (or at least efficiently cleaning up after) accident-prone people?
Are there static attarctors, do they have some aura bringing down hardware, or are they just wiping out our hard work 'to make it look neat'?
[ insert meme here ]
You need to see the French movie "Le Chevre" (The Goat).
Good acting and writing, and exactly this kind of scenario (somepeople have bad luck). Also, the movie is hilarious!
you are talking about desktop pcs. in a production server environment, you make a habit of using wrist straps (who cares if they're lame, you want to remove as much liability from yourself as possible). you avoid glaringly stupid moves like placing a HDD, RAM, expansion cards, etc. without a static shield on a METAL surface. you don't remove a server from a rack/data center unless absolutely necessary (to avoid further damaging equipment). if you really find yourself accident prone (everyone has wandering minds once in awhile), work with another admin that is attentive to these things.
most importantly, which i tend to notice is commonly ignored regardless of where you work... LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES/ACTIONS. If you fry a hard drive because you left it someplace you weren't, ingrain into your head to never do it again. If you learn how to perform a task, WRITE IT DOWN and repeat it several times to make it a habit. I have had too many jr consultants come to me asking how to build a server with a RAID setup and then forget what they did 5 minutes ago.
in response to your gf with the shocking personality.. i have the same problem in my apartment. walking 2 ft will create a giant spark on any metal object i touch (my gf walks into my apt and immediately her hair goes crazy.. its really bad). teach your gf to start touching the case of her computer before she starts using it. if you have carpets, this should be common practice during the winter. i personally witnessed a laptop lose all usb functionality when a co-worker touched his mouse (carpeted office) and got an electric surprise (the mouse started smoking!). remember, static electricity is a circuit's worst enemy.
-dk
My usual rule of thumb is to provide the PHB a list of all of the benefits they, personally, will get, any recognition they will receive, any speedups they will experience... To be a boss requires a high level of self-importance and ego, so you simply make sure that you feed these generously.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I mean, if he is keeping his job.
Nowadays you design a service, and a service must include measures to ensure redundancy.
Or what was the plan? Deploy a single machine and hope for the best?
If the application was a game server for children in a kindergarten, well, it may not be critical.
But for more serious businesses or organizations of any kind, to ignore redundancy from the design phase and during testing, is simply a capital sin, especially now that hardware is cheap. The least one can do is using some virtualization software (like Vmware or similar) where you have an identical virtual system in an underutilized alternative machine.
But frankly now hardware is such small percentage of the cost of most projects that not to build redundancy from the start should be a sackable offense. If you are in a place where they can't afford expensive machines you can get very capable ones 2nd hand, at least in order to avoid this stupid oh my good I'll be fucked.
If you are for lack of hardware you deserve to be.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Far too late to get mod points, but honestly, since nothing i support is 'industrial strength', my answer is 'Frys. Hows that adage go? You want something done right, do it yourself. 'course I've always see it more as "If you do it yourself, you can't blame someone else when things go wrong.
But I'm sure the part will be there post-haste, since I'm the one driving to and from. Surely I can't be the only one that actually relies on frys to have generic versions of stuff? Hell, lately, I've been getting 0805sm stuff from them... (yeah, its a bit pricey) but whats next day shipping when Frys is there and back in a hour or two depending on traffic.
Dell still does a few things imperfectly, like how the rails from the 2650 series don't quite fit a 2850, and the new RapidRails for the 2850 no longer fit in my older generic cabinets, because they reduced the range of depth adjustment...
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Oh, we're talking about planet Earth. Well, then, it is 52 weeks each year.
Problem is some online vendors who show the item as "IN STOCK" will gladly take your order, and then a couple of days later cancel it because it's not in stock. No big deal, except that they don't notify you... No emails, no phone calls, no snail mail, no nothing. Worse yet, if they have an online status section on their page, it won't tell you "Cancelled" most of the time. It simply says "Pending" or "Shipping", or whatever... After a week or two, I finally realized I don't have all my parts and start checking what I ordered from where... Then I end up calling the vendor only to find out they cancelled the order.
Now, it's off to find another vendor with the item in stock and try again, but a few days or so have now been wasted.
This has happened now to me at least several times with several different online venodrs.
So the question remains, who do you (or can you) trust?
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
Off topic? Hell no, your dead on the mark, the topic is equipment suppliers you can trust in a maintenance emergency, not just I hope an IT maintenance emergency. As for McMaster Carr, well a broad ranging selection overnite on more quality stuff than you can shake a stick at(420,000+), nearly all regularly in stock. Excellent sales staff, shipping and internal support services website and cross referenced catalog. If I get an order in by 2:00PM I usually get by 9:30AM next day, and have gotten same day orders. My only gripe is that it is often not possible to replace an item exactly by say manufacturer, though sometimes you can. However I have never gotten a lower quality item than I expected or required. Not often the cheapest, but not unreasonable and then emergencys are often not a time to quibble around anyway. They kick even Graingers ass consistently on range of product types and delivery times, often on price if not on specific item type selection choices or OEM replacement requirements, and Graingers not bad themselves. I guess McMaster Carr is not a publicly traded company since I see no reference to such on the site, shame, cause if the PER is decent I would say they would be a great investment.
For alarm/control system specific stuff including PC's, networking items and alarm/controls software/hardware, emergency technical service and general supplies the Louisville, Ky office of Johnson Controls is simply awesome. I have had these guys out at all kinds of ungodly hours on tough trobleshooting and hardware replacement problems, they stay until it's done needless to say the work is always finished and always first rate. Very expensive help but well worth it.
"for a potato cannon that we were building"
I hope you don't get a visit from the boys in black:). Some buddy's and I had a lot of fun at one time with handheld schedule 80 propane fired tennis ball bazookas. Also have had a blast in the past with plastic soda bottle launchers with various firing fuels/methods. My Mom had a hair salon when I was just 10 -12 or so, we had a lot of fun then with "empty" hair spray cans. Heck this was the late 60's and I remember buying many 5lb boxes of Potassium Nitrate, Flowers of Sulpher, Rosin and Charcoal from the local alcoholic pharmacist. And some of the other stuff we did in the 70's as teens I won't even mention. Its a wonder we lived through it all. Nearly "died" one rainy day when I was drying homebrew model rocket engines in my Moms new oven, pilot light only, when the baby sitter decided to make brownies while I was away grinding&binding the next batch, oops.
Matthew