On Wed, Sep 22, 2004 at 11:00:43AM -0500, Kevin wrote: > On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 10:08:07 +0100, Greg Hennessy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 21 Sep 2004 23:20:32 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Kevin) wrote: > > >I'm sort of in the same boat. I have a strong case for replacing > > >multiple PIX failover pairs with OpenBSD on Dell, > > > > They are installed, working and a sunk cost. > > > > Why would you waste money replacing them ? > > Cisco's annual maintenance fee for each PIX is about equal to our cost > for a Dell to replace it. The annual cost for a Dell hardware support > contract is minimal.
(If you haven't already) You (and everyone else) might want to look at coldsparing. I don't know how many systems you have, but with a fair number (say, 10) of the same kind, the cost of 1 more is less than hw contracts on the other 10. This works fairly well in my environment, but then I have three year warranties on the stuff I use, so when an active dies, I simply put the coldspare in its place, get the broken system fixed and I'm off to the races again. It means I have to cycle every three years instead of five, but since we moved up our depreciation schedule to a three year cycle, nobody minds. And my MTTR is way under what any service contract can give me, save an "onsite spare pool" which is exceedingly expensive. I mean, we're talking move disks, move net cables, push on button. I also keep a small stockpile of the "standard" disks, NICs, Fibre cards, etc. I'm guessing many already do this, but I thought I'd put it out there just in case. -- adam
