Maintenance that runs past end of support
A server does not fail because the manufacturer ends support. Yet that is the moment most organisations replace it, because without a contract nobody wants to carry the risk. Third party maintenance is the contract that carries on after that: the same response time, the same parts, just not from the manufacturer.
Four things that differ from a vendor contract
The service looks like an OEM contract and differs on four points, all four in your favour.
- One contract across brandsServers from one vendor, storage from a second and networking from a third fall under the same agreement, with one number and one response time. That saves three contracts with three end dates and three ways of starting the clock.
- End of support is not the endThe manufacturer ties its contract to the product life cycle. A third party ties it to your equipment, and that is still there. This is precisely what the service exists for.
- Parts are held for your configurationNot in general, but for the models that sit in your racks. That is the only form in which a response time means anything: without the part, someone on site is just a visit.
- Adding and removing equipment mid-termA machine going out should come off the bill, and a machine coming in should go on it. With a per-device contract that is a change and not a renegotiation.
The levels, and what they actually mean
They are called roughly the same everywhere. The difference sits in when the clock starts, and that is the question to ask.
Parts only
We hold the parts and ship them; your own administrator does the swap. For environments with their own people and several identical machines this is often the sensible level.
Next business day on site
Someone comes with the part. This is the level at which a contract starts to pay for itself on redundant equipment: the second power supply keeps it running, and the replacement can wait until tomorrow.
Within four hours, business hours
For equipment where work stops but that work does not happen at night. In the Netherlands and Belgium one of our own engineers goes out; it is not passed to a party you have never met.
Within four hours, around the clock
For equipment where the company stops. Expensive per year, and cheap against a night without production, but only if you have actually costed that night.
Three cases where this is not the answer
Maintenance extends the life of hardware. It solves none of these three.
- The software behind the hardware is out of supportA hypervisor or operating system without security updates is a risk no maintenance contract covers. The machine runs, and that is not the same as being allowed to run.
- The part no longer existsFor some generations the market is empty. A contract is then a promise that breaks at the worst possible moment, and we say up front that this model is better replaced.
- You have no spare in the designA four-hour response on a machine without a second unit still means four hours down. Where that is too long, the answer is a second machine and not a faster contract.
What fits under one contract
The gain of this service is that these four groups sit on one agreement instead of on four vendor contracts with four end dates.
- ServersDell, HPE, IBM, Lenovo, Fujitsu and Supermicro. Including generations the manufacturer has taken off the list, as long as the parts can be held.
- StorageNetApp, Dell, HPE, IBM and Hitachi Vantara, and the tape libraries from Quantum. With storage the firmware version belongs in the contract and not only the model.
- NetworkingCisco, Juniper, Arista, HPE Aruba, Extreme Networks and Fortinet. Mind the difference between hardware cover and the licence that switches the features on; the second runs through the manufacturer.
- SANBrocade, and the switches supplied under the storage vendor’s own name. In many contracts Fibre Channel falls silently between the server and the network part; here it is named separately.
What goes with this
Maintenance hangs on parts, and on what happens when it goes wrong.
Questions we get about this
The ones that come up most, answered briefly.
Does the manufacturer warranty lapse if I take this out?
For equipment still under factory warranty this is not the intended service; it begins where the vendor contract ends. If cover is still running we say so and wait for it to end rather than putting something alongside it.
What if a part is no longer available?
Then we say so up front and do not write a contract on it. A response time on a machine whose market is empty is a promise that breaks at exactly the wrong moment; for those generations, replacement or a second machine on the shelf is the honest answer.
Can one contract span several sites?
Yes, and that is usually the reason to do it this way. Per device it is recorded where it stands and which level applies, so a machine at a branch can carry a different level from the same machine in the datacentre.
The cover that matches the risk
Send a list of what you have, with brand, model and where it runs. You get a proposal per machine, and not the most expensive level everywhere.
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