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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!
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.
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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.
Hot spare.
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.
Let the Astroturfing BEGIN!
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
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'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.
Newegg is great for personal stuff, but this is a business issue; you can't wait a couple days for something to come, usually. Plus, when stock runs out on Newegg, they are sometimes slow at getting replacements (my experience).
Dell service plans weren't too bad when we used them back at college, but other than that, I'm not really sure. I've also been a fan of having backup gear on hand just in case; why build (or buy) one when you can build two for twice the price? (from "Contact" or something like that) :)
-Will F.L.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
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?
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."
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.
always do like NASA, and buy the spare parts you need from ebay
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
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.
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!
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!"
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.
I second this. My company has been using both HP and Compaq server hardware for years. Rarely do we have hardware failures severe enought to cash in on the 24x7x365 support guaruntee, but it has happened, and they have (both companies, even before the merger) responded in a very timely fashion. I was impressed. It was worth the money. I normally refuse to buy "extended" support of any kind. But in this case, it was well worth it.
-Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat-
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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, I get emails from AnySystem because I bought an Ultra 5 from you guys on Ebay. Overpriced does not even begin to describe your prices. I have to admit that the emails start off very exciting, telling me about the great deals that you have to offer, but when it comes down to price, I can't say that paying near original retail for a Sun Blade 100 that's worth, oh, about 50 bucks is very exciting to me (although if somebody pays you, I'm sure it's quite exciting!)
-h-
365 weeks a year?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Did they hire you for your low UID?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
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.
We're talking about an office environment here, not a home.
Office:
From Jan. 2002 - Jan 2005 we had OptiPlex GX110 desktops. 733mhz, 512mb and 40gb hdd's. Nice little PC's, and they served us well. In Jan 2005, out rolled the OptiPlex GX270's - 2.8ghz, 1gb and 80gb hdd's.
Initially, i thought 'whoah, this is a lot of PC'. Three months later, a new version of an application that runs on 85% of the desktops was released. Minimum specs: 2.0ghz and 1gb.
Home:
My desktop rig is a 1800+ w/ 1gb that i've had for almost 5 years. Still got the p3/500 w/ 512 that it replaced. That served as a replacement for the p120 w/ 256 that I was running debian on.
As for my car it's hardly under warranty - 142,000mi and still runs like new. You might get a kick out of the fact that I just put new brakepads on it in my garage last month!
If a power supply croaks or a processor fries at home, there is minimal cost associated with it. You buy a new part, and replace it. No rush other than our geeky sense of pride.
When something dies in a business, it costs money. Not only does the problem need to be fixed, but the employee who's machine went down can not do their job - thats where the real cost is.
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
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)!!
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.
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
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 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
"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.
"When you perform miracle after miracle to save their asses time after time, they get lazy and start believing that that is the natural order of things."
Yes! I enjoy my job and I'm always very helpful to everyone around me, including the dev team, end-users, and other MIS folks. I get it done fast because I know that's how I like it when I ask for something, too. Unfortunately, it does bite you in the ass. You do need to eventually push back a little bit, or else you'll end up in your scenerio. It sucks.
When someone asks me to do something for a third time, I'll give them some tongue. One of the help desk guys is now into getting user profiles re-created to fix just about EVERYTHING. Since only myself and a couple others have access to do it, I've had to fuck with roaming profiles all day instead of doing my project work. So yesterday, I bitched him out about it. I said "What's the problem?" and I fixed it in four minutes without touching the user profile. I then proceeded to lecture him on how it should now be considered a last resort.
I usually tell my manager about such things, in the event that someone complains that I'm not doing my job, even though I've done it better then the last three admins in this place. Unfortunately, if it's management porking you, you can't do anything about it. Then, you have to decide whether or not to find a new job. Fortunately, in IT, one of the only ways to advance your career is to change jobs, so it's not like finding a new job is anything new to most of us =)
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
A place that I worked at, the sys admin would keep a hiking backpack in his office. When people would ask what it was for, he would say it was for when something went wrong at the office. Everyone always laughed about how he was just ready for the next big one or something.
This went on for awhile until the new manager decided that he wanted something off of backup instead of being careful. Right in front of the manager, he grabbed his hiking backpack and walked into our MDF with a "See you in 2 days!" He setup an entire camp in the MDF, complete with 1 man tent, sleeping back (ear protection), clothes line between the racks and everything. The only reason he came out was to eat or leak. The manager got the idea and has been more careful ever since. [note: this was a very OLD system that took forever to restore]
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
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...
If the machine has an RS-232 port and boots, I'd recommend an old version of LapLink. It had a remote install feature that worked by running a copy of command.com using a serial port as the console (a little-known feature of MS-DOS) and then piping the program through that to a file). You can then use it at both ends to transfer files.
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