When I worked for a small bank, we purchased IBM wintel servers for the most part. For all servers and important equipment (LTO tape backup jukeboxes) we purchased extended warranty for as long as they would sell them with 4 hour response. It was more cost effective than service contracts. On some important equipment we did not want to replace every 3 years, we did do 4 hour service contracts.
Most others, we kept old compatible machines as spares. On one RAID array it took IBM over 48 hours to find and get on site a disk because only 2 sites in the country needed that kind, and it was on site at the other site (down in the back waters of the Everglades they said, and we were in Houston. It took over a day to get someone to it and to get it back to Miami to be flown to us. So 4 hours is 4 hours to respond, not to fix. The bank where I was was especially tight. When at Amoco in Houston, IBM used our site as a spare parts depot for many of the mainframes in the area. We furnished square feet under IBM security inside our data center, just so when IBM needed it for our equipment, it would be on site. I am sure we paid extra for it. We also had a full time on-site IBM tech (not a jr. one either). But with up to 6 now Z-class machines, some expenses are worth it. _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list Tech@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
