OT: EQL support renewal

[Thuleman]

Folks, I know this is OT, but you have much more insight into Enterprise storage than most of the folks who visit the Data Storage Systems forum.

I have this EQL PS5000, and while the unit performed admirably I am in retrospect quite sore about having bought into the PS5000 literally weeks before the PS4000 was released which would have been more than adequate for our needs. Be that as it may, the support contract renewal is coming up, and I am seriously considering to not renew.

When I wrote that to the VAR who sold me the unit (and who send me a quote for renewal) they got all riled up and called me trying to talk some sense into me. "Yadda yadda yadda, Enterprise storage, yap yap yap, no one doesn't renew, yap yap yap, this is madness!!!"

The reality of things is that I don't think the renewal (~$2,000) is good value. The unit works, I don't need to call tech support for anything, I can't really imagine what I would call them for now that the unit has already been operating for a year. The unit isn't supporting any mission critical operations, even days of downtime would be acceptable (though not ideal). Sure a controller failure would set me back like 8k, but perhaps the odds of a controller failure happening in the next four years are low enough to take the chance? An additional consideration is that the unit is probably up for complete replacement in three years anyway.

It's a little bit about the money, though I could swing it, but it's a lot about just being unhappy with my VAR (though they probably don't make much on renewals anyway). I guess I am just being unreasonable?

 

[lopoetve]

Not having it is a very, very, very bad idea. This is your business, and the heart of it. Not having support means when it breaks, they laugh at you. No firmware updates, no parts replacement, no disk replacement (arrays go through disks), etc.

Having worked the support side, we always laugh at people that didn't renew a support contract on hardware - especially on an array. But, it's up to you.

 

[Berg0]

yea, no support is major fail, as much as it sucks having to pay for supports, it's just the cost of doing business. Smartnet renewal and Netapp contract renewal time really sucks for us, but, you gotta do it.

 

[sabregen]

Working for a VAR, and having to previously handle the support renewal (yay for promotions, and not doing that crap, anymore) I would urge you to reconsider. If you're not happy with your VAR, the best thing to do is tell them, honestly. $2k isn't shit to renew support on an array for year, and at the potential cost of $8k per controller, I think you see where I'm headed with this. If you really don't like the VAR, take your account elsewhere. Look for another VAR, call EQL directly. I don't know if they take renewals directly, or not, as we do not sell EQL. Maybe you know more than I do (as I know nothing of how EQL does their support renewals/firmware upgrade access/customer portal stuff) but it is possible that you're potentially missing out on more than just piece of mind by not doing the renewal? Maybe you would not get firmware updates, or management interface updates, product notifications, etc?

I know with many of our product lines that we sell, if the support contract is dropped, it either cannot ever be covered again, or has to be re-certified should the customer change their mind. Re-certification fees are usually equivalent to the cost, pro-rated, for the time the system was not under coverage...so you pay for it (the time that it wasn't covered) anyways, one way or another. Some OEMs even go as far as to say the re-certification fee is 1 year or the time not under coverage, whichever is more, plus the current renewal requested time. I've seen it happen quite a bit. The customer always facepalms.

And FYI, most of the time the quote that you see from a VAR on a support renewal is less than 10% over cost. We provide it as a courtesy service to our customers (although I suppose each VAR is different in their pricing, and their strategy, on this). It usually will cost us more in employee and administrative time to book the renewal than the 10% over cost that the customer pays. It's actually a royal pain in the ass for a VAR, unless they have considerable resources to handle support renewals, specifically.

You're reasoning, in that you do not think $2k represents a good value, is fine. That's how you feel. However, this is the logic people use to justify not having health or car insurance. You're playing the numbers game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I would urge you not to intentionally set yourself up for a loss.

 

[NetJunkie]

Everything sabregen said is right on. We are an EMC partner.

First, don't be mad at the VAR for buying something before another model came out. In many cases the VAR doesn't know..sometimes we get surprised and "weeks" is a long time.

What are you going to do if a drive fails? You'll find a $2K support renewal isn't much more than most enterprise drives. Also like he said above, if you do decide two years from now to put maintenance on the unit you'll be paying for the past two years as well as the year going forward. You can't just throw maintenance on the unit at any time or people would only do it when a problem came up.

$2K is dirt cheap..and as was said, they aren't making money on that renewal. We might make 5 points on a renewal. We just do it as a courtesy to our customers so they can deal with us (a known vendor) instead of direct to EMC or VMware.