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Hmm! It certainly seems like if it's worthwhile for anyone to do with unspecialized labor, then it would certainly be worth doing for a specialist. Why is it t

Hmm! It certainly seems like if it's worthwhile for anyone to do with unspecialized labor, then it would certainly be worth doing for a specialist. Why is it that I've never heard of a power supply repair technician in a data center?

tinco 4y ago
Because data centers don't care about ewaste. It is cheaper to have power supplies redundant and in stock than it is to have a technician on retainer.
- nwiswell 4y ago
  Server power supplies are expensive, and data centers sure do care about the bottom line. If it costs $20 to fix a $100 power supply, why would you replace it?
  - tinco 4y ago
    How frequent are the failures? It costs a lot less than $20 to repair a broken power supply, but if you break less than $5000 worth of power supplies per month you're not breaking even on the technician not even counting the management overhead. I don't think small cost savings like that are going to be implemented simply because it makes the operation more complex without landing any manager a big fat bonus. Unless I'm grossly underestimating the failure rate of those supplies?
    - nwiswell 4y ago
      I think you're underestimating the scale of the modern data center.
      - tinco 4y ago
        So you're saying in your DC enough of them break that they could feed a technician? Say the technician would have an 80% success rate and he saves $100 bucks per repair, there would need to be 63 failures per month for there to be 0 cost savings. What's the minimum cost savings for it to be worth a managers time? Maybe double it again so 125 failures per month? I wonder if the vendor would void the warranty and that would have any consequences. Does you DC get around 125 failures per month?
  - c_o_n_v_e_x 4y ago
    Actually I did a study on this (I'm a PM for a small server company) about a year ago with data scraped from a popular US based online vendor. For PSUs >1000 watts, I found that server supplies are cheaper both on a relative (more watts / dollar) and absolute cost basis than ATX form factor supplies.
    - jandrese 4y ago
      Aren't the >1k watt ATX power supplies usually the "gamer edition" ones with huge markups? They cost a lot because they are a small niche--very few PCs need power supplies that big, and the ones that do are running multiple wildly expensive GPUs so budget is clearly not a concern. There's probably more legitimate demand on the commercial side for >1kw PSUs so they can enjoy larger economies of scale.
tecleandor 4y ago
I don't know if you're trolling but, probably it's all about support contracts and liability. - If your hardware hasn't reached EOL, it's probably under a warranty or support contract. So you just let your provider swap/fix it. - If you tinker with anything and there's a problem with the rest of the hardware, they'll probably won't honor the warranty or support contract, or you could have problems with your insurance. If it were a home user fixing a PSU... that's a different thing.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> It certainly seems like if it's worthwhile for anyone to do with unspecialized labor, then it would certainly be worth doing for a specialist 'Anyone' could be a penniless student and his time costs little, specialist may charge $40 per hour. Also even ideal free market has cost of transaction, discoveravility, etc. Hospitals have repair technicians, but why would you need one spesifically focusing on power supplies - he does not need different training or equipment

tinco 4y ago

Because data centers don't care about ewaste. It is cheaper to have power supplies redundant and in stock than it is to have a technician on retainer.

nwiswell 4y ago
Server power supplies are expensive, and data centers sure do care about the bottom line. If it costs $20 to fix a $100 power supply, why would you replace it?
- tinco 4y ago
  How frequent are the failures? It costs a lot less than $20 to repair a broken power supply, but if you break less than $5000 worth of power supplies per month you're not breaking even on the technician not even counting the management overhead. I don't think small cost savings like that are going to be implemented simply because it makes the operation more complex without landing any manager a big fat bonus. Unless I'm grossly underestimating the failure rate of those supplies?
  - nwiswell 4y ago
    I think you're underestimating the scale of the modern data center.
    - tinco 4y ago
      So you're saying in your DC enough of them break that they could feed a technician? Say the technician would have an 80% success rate and he saves $100 bucks per repair, there would need to be 63 failures per month for there to be 0 cost savings. What's the minimum cost savings for it to be worth a managers time? Maybe double it again so 125 failures per month? I wonder if the vendor would void the warranty and that would have any consequences. Does you DC get around 125 failures per month?
- c_o_n_v_e_x 4y ago
  Actually I did a study on this (I'm a PM for a small server company) about a year ago with data scraped from a popular US based online vendor. For PSUs >1000 watts, I found that server supplies are cheaper both on a relative (more watts / dollar) and absolute cost basis than ATX form factor supplies.
  - jandrese 4y ago
    Aren't the >1k watt ATX power supplies usually the "gamer edition" ones with huge markups? They cost a lot because they are a small niche--very few PCs need power supplies that big, and the ones that do are running multiple wildly expensive GPUs so budget is clearly not a concern. There's probably more legitimate demand on the commercial side for >1kw PSUs so they can enjoy larger economies of scale.

tecleandor 4y ago

I don't know if you're trolling but, probably it's all about support contracts and liability. - If your hardware hasn't reached EOL, it's probably under a warranty or support contract. So you just let your provider swap/fix it. - If you tinker with anything and there's a problem with the rest of the hardware, they'll probably won't honor the warranty or support contract, or you could have problems with your insurance. If it were a home user fixing a PSU... that's a different thing.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> It certainly seems like if it's worthwhile for anyone to do with unspecialized labor, then it would certainly be worth doing for a specialist 'Anyone' could be a penniless student and his time costs little, specialist may charge $40 per hour. Also even ideal free market has cost of transaction, discoveravility, etc. Hospitals have repair technicians, but why would you need one spesifically focusing on power supplies - he does not need different training or equipment