@pete-s said in SANS SEC401: Security Essentials - alternatives?:

@irj said in SANS SEC401: Security Essentials - alternatives?:

@pete-s said in SANS SEC401: Security Essentials - alternatives?:

@irj said in SANS SEC401: Security Essentials - alternatives?:

I am curious to what SANS training costs?

Around $6000 for the training.

So after travel, etc, it is over budget?

Well, since I'm in Europe it's makes sense to take the training here. With flights, travel costs, hotel, etc the total will be about 8250 EUR, which is $9650. Add to that the loss of billable hours and it adds up.

Most of your standard cert training is like $3000 ,but most of the time it is just a bootcamp which really isnt what you want. I think you are going to be at that $5-6k range for the type of training you are looking at.

I recently attended an O365 workshop that was $4k for 3 days and it was an absolute joke. Alot of time your training, is only as good as your instructor.

@DustinB3403 said in CP - Dell vs HP server quotes:

I've received two quotes for new server hardware - one from our local reseller and one directly from Dell. As far as I can tell, the two quotes are identical spec-wise but the local reseller is almost $12k more expensive. Here are the two quotes:

Quote from Dell:
2x Dell PowerEdge R430 servers $6,665.60

2x Xeon E5-2630 v3 CPUs 2x 32 GB RDIMM Diskless configuration
1x Dell SCv2020 iSCSI SAN $10,303.26 14x Dell 1.2 TB SAS 12GB, 10k, 2.5" HD
1x Dell N2048 gigabit switch $1,693.49

TOTAL: $18,662.35

HP Quote from local reseller:
2x HP ProLiant DL360 servers $7,266.00

2x Xeon E5-2630 v3 CPUs 64 GB RAM (unknown configuration) Diskless configuration
1x HP MSA 2040 SAN $20,932.00 14x HP MSA 1.2 TB 10K SAS 2.5in drives includes $5,850 in labor so actual price
is only $15,082
1x Cisco Catalyst 2960-X gigabit switch $2,320.00

TOTAL: $30,518.00

Difference: $11,855.65

Is there any reason why I should choose the HP solution over the Dell solution? I will be running vSphere 6 on these servers. I'm not familiar with managing either server line so either way I'll be learning new management tools. When it comes to support I think I trust my local reseller more than Dell but $12k extra is hard to stomach just for that.

[Edit: CP Code M.]

Unless that OP is restricted to 1U hosts, I would go with the quote from Xbyte for Dell 730xd with same specs as in quotes is
0_1477764464719_upload-e7876862-aaf2-4c7d-9461-089a8141fab5

Multiply by 2, add Starwind's vSAN and a couple 10Gb NICs and he's done. Especially if only 2 hosts. Same(ish) price, way more reliability, better performance all around. I'd post that reco on SW but would likely get banned lol.

The one thing not mentioned is if there are other hosts connecting to the SAN.