Can anyone tell me how often Dell do offers on their servers such as the R200?
At the moment I could save around £170 per server but this offer expires quite soon and I'm wondering if it will be a long time before another offer becomes available.
Also, will it be fine to take out the basic memory and hard drive supplied and fit some I get from another retailer, or will that invalidate the warranty?
When we last ordered a batch of R200's they were on a 'save £358' promotion if I remember correctly and I believe that expired mid-end Jan 08 and was to celebrate the launch of the product I think
I'm sure the likes of Jamie from Register1 will be able to give you a good indication of when Dells prices drop due to promotions etc.
Their prices drop at end of quarter, and massively (as you saw!) at end of year!
As such, new promotions will come along every 8-10 weeks generally.
TBH, I don't keep an eye on the offers now as we're in the preferred business section (no longer b2b) so the account manager just gives the best pricing he can anyway..
We've never had to use the warranty on any Dell server we've bought, but I cant see why they would have an issue covering the Dell portions of the server (ie if a non dell drive fails, they obviously wont cover that, but I don't see how / why they would complaint about a PSU going)
Why use non-Dell though, just tell Dell when you're ordering that you're going to buy crucial RAM as it's cheaper, and they'll usually look to price matching anyway if you're a good customer.
If you have the onsite warranty the engineer brings documentation of what you ordered. I have known them refuse to repair machines which have non dell supplied ram, and on one occasion due to a 2nd SATA being fitted to a 1425SC !
*if* the engineer checks and *if* he thinks its related to the problem then they might check the partlist - most of the time they dont care or notice.
Its often like pulling teeth to get them to come out (4hours is from when they accept 3 days later there is a problem not from when you lodge the call) but they do tend to just swap and check as far as the internals are concerned, so are very rapid on the replacement/time on site. They also call before arrival which is handy.
Its better to keep spares and not bother, and get a discount from your account manager for not having warranties IMHO.
IBM are the complete opposite - they'll spend 5 hours onsite trying to diagnose a problem, when it would have only taken 15 mins to fit a new mobo !
So the 2 extremes - dell with their "here's a new one" swap it method (which doesnt always fix the problem) and ibm with the "i wont swap it unless i know its the exact part at fault" (which is not conductive to getting up and running again ASAP)
__________________ Rob Golding, Othello Technology Systems Ltd AS29527 Company#03894981 VAT#GB-782561410. T:0871 277 6875 F:0871 277 6875 domains email forwarding resellers ecommerce colocation rackspace ip transit secondary mx/dns datacentre ih online/offsite backup
* OthelloHosts.net CPanel/WHM, H-Sphere, Plesk, Ensim, DirectAdmin High-Availability Professional Email / Web Hosting
* OthelloVPS.net Managed Xen4 Enterprise Virtual Private Servers and Dedicated Servers
# Currently buying 123-reg, ukreg, heart-internet and enom domain resellers - www.hostacquisitions.co.uk
Installing your own ram should not invalidate the warranty unless there is a clause in there somewhere.
Two things to note:
If the machine goes tits up and you need support then just slip the original ram back in before the engineer turns up
Secondly you may find that the cost of installing your own bought ram far outweighs any warranty anyway.
If you can save £300 by using your own ram and the base machine cost just £300 in the first place then take the gamble!
IMO Dell seem to make the upgrades. Some of the costs of their CPUs, ram and disk upgrades is far out of line with what you can buy third party. This applies to servers, desktops, laptops.
Unfortunately some webhosters seem to follow this line too and charge not so competitive monthly rates for upgrades.
__________________ Registered User
Last edited by Larry David : 19th February 2008 at 07:03 PM.
When ever I've needed to have an engineer come on-site I've always been lucky enough to have a decent one that's not grumbled about any upgrades we may have undertaken ourselves.
Having asked an engineer though, they are well within their right to refuse to carry out work on a machine that has been modified from the original spec so my advice would be to change back to original spec if your worried before the engineer arrives as they usually call ahead as Rob said!
If you can save £300 by using your own ram and the base machine cost just £300 in the first place then take the gamble!
IMO Dell seem to make the upgrades. Some of the costs of their CPUs, ram and disk upgrades is far out of line with what you can buy third party. This applies to servers, desktops, laptops.
As I've said already, they willl pricematch if the deal is worth it to them..
If it's for a bottom of the range server, dont expect much from them.. and rightly... but if it's a decent spec, or you're a decent customer, they're very accomodating.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry David
Unfortunately some webhosters seem to follow this line too and charge not so competitive monthly rates for upgrades.
If they're not competative, then people will vote with their feet if it's a breaking point.. BUT one mans competative is another mans cost with no margin!
