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<font style="font-size: 10pt;"><p style="font-size: 10pt;">The initial costs
savings of the purchase are highly negated by the longterm. First, in 5-10
years will this company still be around, and will they have any support for
this? Where will you go to purchase parts in 3-5 years, especially if they
are no longer in business? I have seen countless times people having to
re-purchase equipment simply because a replacement part could not be found.
Last year a client had to replace a server because of a problem on the
motherboard. They were using a white-box server. On the other hand, in this
same week I replaced the power supply to my HP DL380 that is about 7 years
old. If they were using an IBM, Sun, or HP server then we could have simply
purchased a new motherboard and kept the server up an running. The initial
cost savings of say $500 was really outweighed by the $4000 price to replace
the server. <br></div><div> </div><div>I also would emphasize that the
support from HP is going to be of much higher quality than what this company
can provide. Again with HP, one Friday night at midnight I called their
support regarding an issue with a server. Saturday morning I got a call in
from a team of HP support techs who worked together to find the solution. I
highly doubt you will get that from this company. In fact their support is
M-F NBH. If a problem arises over the weekend, calculate the cost of having
this down on Monday waiting for a solution as opposed to simply having it
resolved and operational by Sunday.<br> </div><div> <br>Don't look at
costs alone, especially for a business. Keep in mind that the costs will be
written off at the end of the year anyways. Over the years I can count
numerous examples where people and businesses have been simply burned by
going with the cost solution purchasing hardware such as white-box, low-end,
consumer oriented, or 2nd tier MFRs. It's one thing to purchase from a place
like this for a home computer, but quite the opposite when using this as a
core business product.<br></div><br><div><br> </div></font>
Sean<br><br><br>
<br><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); padding-right:
0px; padding-left: 5px; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 0px;">
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: "Chris Niesen" <chris.niesen@gmail.com><br>
To: mlug-list@mail.milwaukeelug.org, tclug-list@mn-linux.org,
madlug@madisonlinux.org<br>
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:13:28 -0500<br>
Subject: [tclug-list] NAS storage advice request<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.aberdeeninc.com" target="_blank">
http://www.aberdeeninc.com</a><br><br>My company is looking to buy two new
NAS's from HP (at 10K each). They want to get about 10TB (raw) of
space, and I came across the company above and was wondering if anyone out
there in mlug, tclug, or madlug land had any experience with this
manufacturer. They seem to have a very competitive price point.<br>
<br>Thanks for any input you may have!<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Chris
Niesen
</blockquote>
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