RE: [SAGE] to buy or not to buy service contracts

[Dennis Viner <Dennis_Viner@kgi.edu>]

We have a 16 cpu Origin 2k with a service contract that's a little bit over
$11K per year. We selected the 'selfcare' option which means they ship the
parts and we do the install if there's a problem. Technically someone is
supposed to be SGI trained, but this has never been an issue. The price was
based on a 3 year contract billed annually, but I was promised (in writing)
by the rep that we could back out with 60 days notice. Based on our 3 years
of experience with SGI, I'd strongly recommend the contract. We went through
a 6 month stretch where the entire system would randomly hang about once a
month without a dump. Impossible to trace and only solved by replacing the
entire top module.

I'd say the software maintenance is also required since SGI has made it very
difficult to get patch information unless you have a contract. They used to
offer a great Varsity program which provide all the development tools, but
that was ended last year. The new program costs about 10x more than Sun's
developer program. We're transitioning to Sun now, but the tradein for the
Origin is minimal and it's still quit useful.

Dennis Viner 
Network and Systems Administrator 
Keck Graduate Institute 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jenn Sturm [mailto:jsturm@hamilton.edu]
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2003 8:08 AM
To: sage-members@usenix.org
Subject: [SAGE] to buy or not to buy service contracts


I've always bought service contracts for expensive equipment, but we're 
in a strange situation here where it's just not clear if that's the 
right path to take. We were offered a 32-processor SGI Origin 2000 for 
$100K, with a $50K service contract. The machine is remarketed, which 
I'm reluctant to go with, but it will perfectly fit a hole in our line 
up of machines and enable us increase our resources on the cheap (we 
already have a cluster--the Origin 2000 will serve a different need).

If we purchase the service contract, it's possible that we might not be 
able to get all the funds together for the machine (we need to buy a 
big A/C for it as well as renovate a room, so it's getting expensive 
for a "cheap" machine). If, on the other hand, we don't purchase the 
service contract, and instead leave part of that money lying around for 
repairs, should they be needed, we leave ourselves open to the 
possibility of having a big pile of junk we couldn't afford to fix were 
there to be a catastrophic failure.

How does your shop run things? Do you buy the big service contracts? Or 
do you take the gamble and keep reserve funds around?


-Jenn


___________
Jennifer Sturm
System Administrator and Research Support Specialist
Chemistry Department
Hamilton College
198 College Hill Road
Clinton, NY 13323

tel: 315-859-4745
fax: 315-859-4744

jsturm@hamilton.edu

http://www.chem.hamilton.edu/
http://mars.chem.hamilton.edu/