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> For servers they tend to be taken out of commission when the service they provide is migrated to a whole new platform Or when the service contract expires or

> For servers they tend to be taken out of commission when the service they provide is migrated to a whole new platform Or when the service contract expires or is too expensive to extend. You can't run a server of any importance without a service contract; it can be the difference between all the server's users and services being down for hours or a more than a week, and between IT management keeping their job for hours or longer.

mmt 8y ago
That's just the "enterprise" hardware model. It's overall extremely expensive to begin with and may have made sense back in the days of proprietary hardware, but makes no sense for a commodity hardware installation beyond a trivial size. It's hard to imagine not being able to find a replacement in more than a week, especially if one skipped service contract and just bought a spare or two with a fraction of the savings. It's why moving to cloud infrastructure can be so much cheaper for these shops. Of course, if it is a trivial size, like a single server at a small business, that's a different story.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  Yes, somehow I thought the GP was talking about small business, but I see there is nothing in the text that says so (at least not now). Yes, of course, with cloud infrastructure or just virtualization and spare hardware, service contracts have much less value. > makes no sense for a commodity hardware installation beyond a trivial size It's not the commodity hardware - x86 servers have been mostly commodity hardware for decades - it's virtualization (or other rapid recovery and migration tech) that makes it work.
  - mmt 8y ago
    > Yes, of course, with cloud infrastructure or just virtualization and spare hardware, service contracts have much less value. My assertion is that service contracts for hardware have zero value for commodity hardware installations (beyond trivial size). To whit, they are, invariably, a scam. Server hardware fails vanishingly rarely, with specific, notable exceptions of certain components. Those exceptions have predictable [1] failure rates that are therefore straightforward to budget and/or engineer around. Managers don't know to insist on this, so the scam persists. This was true even before the advent/popularity of virtualization (and therefore "cloud" techniques). It's also true regardless of whether or not one keeps spares on hand. With commodity hardware, vendors always have plenty of spares.. one just hasn't purchased them in advance, so there's an increased latency (not entirely unlike the spares available under a service contract). > It's not the commodity hardware - x86 servers have been mostly commodity hardware for decades - it's virtualization (or other rapid recovery and migration tech) that makes it work. That's where I disagree, at least partly, if I understand correctly the kind of tech you're referring to. Those software solutions are generally just about convenience, or, ideally, reducing recovery time in the case of a non-redundant architecture. Even then, they might turn hours into minutes, not weeks into minutes. More importantly, it's not that software that makes this work. It's the commodity hardware (and, arguably, commodity software/firmware hiding within) that makes it work. If a disk fails, any same or larger [1] can be used as a replacement. Same for RAM or even full servers. It doesn't have to be the same brand because that's the point of it being a commodity. That fact completely eliminates any problem of being down for a week due to hardware failure. In a major tech hub city, getting something delivered same day might not even require paying a premium. Before virtualization or any similar abstraction layer, one could just move disks to a new server (best case) or restore from a backup (worst case). [1] Other than "black swan" events like the flooding in Thailand that wrecked predictability (and reliability overall) for a generation of HDDs. Even then, if one made assumptions based on warranty length changes, those would have been close enough. [2] Well, OK, one does have to be careful to meet minimum performance, especially for SSDs, but even a failure there won't kill basic functionality

mmt 8y ago

That's just the "enterprise" hardware model. It's overall extremely expensive to begin with and may have made sense back in the days of proprietary hardware, but makes no sense for a commodity hardware installation beyond a trivial size. It's hard to imagine not being able to find a replacement in more than a week, especially if one skipped service contract and just bought a spare or two with a fraction of the savings. It's why moving to cloud infrastructure can be so much cheaper for these shops. Of course, if it is a trivial size, like a single server at a small business, that's a different story.

forapurpose 8y ago
Yes, somehow I thought the GP was talking about small business, but I see there is nothing in the text that says so (at least not now). Yes, of course, with cloud infrastructure or just virtualization and spare hardware, service contracts have much less value. > makes no sense for a commodity hardware installation beyond a trivial size It's not the commodity hardware - x86 servers have been mostly commodity hardware for decades - it's virtualization (or other rapid recovery and migration tech) that makes it work.
- mmt 8y ago
  > Yes, of course, with cloud infrastructure or just virtualization and spare hardware, service contracts have much less value. My assertion is that service contracts for hardware have zero value for commodity hardware installations (beyond trivial size). To whit, they are, invariably, a scam. Server hardware fails vanishingly rarely, with specific, notable exceptions of certain components. Those exceptions have predictable [1] failure rates that are therefore straightforward to budget and/or engineer around. Managers don't know to insist on this, so the scam persists. This was true even before the advent/popularity of virtualization (and therefore "cloud" techniques). It's also true regardless of whether or not one keeps spares on hand. With commodity hardware, vendors always have plenty of spares.. one just hasn't purchased them in advance, so there's an increased latency (not entirely unlike the spares available under a service contract). > It's not the commodity hardware - x86 servers have been mostly commodity hardware for decades - it's virtualization (or other rapid recovery and migration tech) that makes it work. That's where I disagree, at least partly, if I understand correctly the kind of tech you're referring to. Those software solutions are generally just about convenience, or, ideally, reducing recovery time in the case of a non-redundant architecture. Even then, they might turn hours into minutes, not weeks into minutes. More importantly, it's not that software that makes this work. It's the commodity hardware (and, arguably, commodity software/firmware hiding within) that makes it work. If a disk fails, any same or larger [1] can be used as a replacement. Same for RAM or even full servers. It doesn't have to be the same brand because that's the point of it being a commodity. That fact completely eliminates any problem of being down for a week due to hardware failure. In a major tech hub city, getting something delivered same day might not even require paying a premium. Before virtualization or any similar abstraction layer, one could just move disks to a new server (best case) or restore from a backup (worst case). [1] Other than "black swan" events like the flooding in Thailand that wrecked predictability (and reliability overall) for a generation of HDDs. Even then, if one made assumptions based on warranty length changes, those would have been close enough. [2] Well, OK, one does have to be careful to meet minimum performance, especially for SSDs, but even a failure there won't kill basic functionality