Never Let the Vendor Set Up a Server
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Isn't the issue here that Dell set the servers up wrong? Or that someone has failed to check that the RAID config they ordered hadn't actually been setup? These seem like pretty basic mistakes that shouldn't have been allowed to happen. A better thread title might be "Never Let Dell Set Up a Server"
There are many issues here. Including that Dell (or whoever) doesn't offer the needed configurations, that they then get it wrong, that someone doesn't check, that there is no process for repeatability, there is no verification of knowledge, documentation and supplies, etc.
There is nothing here specific to Dell. The mistake is in basically skipping the step of setting up a new machine upon delivery and just using it "as it arrives." You wouldn't do that with a car or a laptop, why with an enterprise server that lots of things depend on?
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
All my vendors charge the same day rate regardless of who is doing the work or what the work is.
So they charge the same for racking a server as they would to setup exchange do network configs? Seems like they are ripping you off.
I don't see how else that would work. If you only need a minute of racking and hundreds of hours of other stuff sure, it's not worth the effort to bring in other people. But if you have any amount of this happening there is no way to do this without being ripped off. You are stuck paying engineering rates for physical bench work.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Or under-charging me for Exchange
Possible, of course, but that just means that either they are not financially viable and while you are getting a deal, it won't last and you will have churn. More likely it means you are getting unskilled screwdriver guys that you are paying for Exchange work.
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@Dashrender said:
True, if you're not the one who understands the hypervisor for your company, then the vendor you bring in to install/configure and manage the hypervisor should be the one setting it up as well.
Right, it's still IT that needs to do it. Just your IT or that portion of your IT is outsourced. Nothing wrong there. That's how I advise it for most SMBs. When I say "your IT" I mean to imply that this likely means "your MSP / outsourcer."
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I don't know a good MSP.
Two secrets to that that we've discussed a lot...
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Never look locally. Don't avoid local, but don't choose based on it. The chances that the good vendor is local to you is near zero. Places like Manhattan and London have better chances than most places, but locality is not a valuable discriminating factor for IT services.
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Don't use resellers for IT support or decision making because their interests do not align with yours.
There are tons of bad MSPs out there. There are tons of good ones too. There is no magic to finding a good one. But there are easy ways that people often practically force themselves into bad ones.
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@Dashrender said:
You might have to find someone who isn't local for that I guess - though non local won't be of much help when it comes to turning screws or mounting servers.
Sure they are. As that part is not IT work but bench work, it is absolutely trivial for distant MSPs to bring on low cost remote hands to do that work. There is no IT skills needed there to do rack and stack and only typical home user skills needed to set up things like ILO and iDRAC. That's all that that role needs (or should) be doing.
Not only does this work, it often actually helps. Having too much skill level in your data center rackers can lead to them attempting to do work that really needs to be done by someone with clear IT oversight.
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@scottalanmiller said:
When I say "your IT" I mean to imply that this likely means "your MSP / outsourcer."
This comes back to definition of vendor/MSP/outsourcer and I go round in circles trying to figure out what you mean. Other than to say, my vendors are generally resellers and what I'd call consultants.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
When I say "your IT" I mean to imply that this likely means "your MSP / outsourcer."
This comes back to definition of vendor/MSP/outsourcer and I go round in circles trying to figure out what you mean. Other than to say, my vendors are generally resellers and what I'd call consultants.
Not really. However you define it, you are mixing the people who sell you things with the people who give you advice - no matter what they are called those two are oil and water and should never mix. The definition isn't important, the roles are.
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No, I'm mixing the people who sell me things with the people who install things. We're not talking about advice.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
No, I'm mixing the people who sell me things with the people who install things. We're not talking about advice.
Oh, you calling the reseller the MSP? That's REALLY confusing. Okay, that's just not the case. MSP and consultants... those overlap and are great areas. If you are talking about sales people the terms are reseller or VAR (which is just an abbreviation of reseller.) Totally not MSP by any definition.
So you are saying that you've never found a reseller that you like? That's different. No one discussing MSPs is talking about that role where you hear us use that term. There is a ton of grey area in these terms depending on who is talking, but MSP and Reseller don't overlap. Many MSPs are also resellers, but the two roles are very clearly different and people never refer to reselling as "Managed Services".
So the company doing the installation, though, is doing IT work instead of you and/or your MSP?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
We're not talking about advice.
Sort of, we are. Because the ongoing IT support, unless it is insanely basic and you are directing every little bit of it (which would defeat any value) is a form of advice. It is micro advice rather than macro (advice on RAID setup or whatever rather than architecture or risk mitigation) but still a form of advice. Unless the roles are completely scripted.
Which you could do with a guy doing a rack and stack, but the effort to guide him would easily be ten times or more the effort of doing it yourself.
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Unless you have hundreds of servers going in by the same guy over and over again. Then having someone do that stuff with a well tested script would be different. But Dell, as an example, doesn't do deployments that big. In 2005 I ran Dells largest server migration ever which was only 69 servers. And that justified script development, but it was three months of planning for a twelve month project. The overhead of the planning was still very high.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
No, I'm mixing the people who sell me things with the people who install things. We're not talking about advice.
Oh, you calling the reseller the MSP? That's REALLY confusing.
Am I? I'm saying that I have a vendor and I buy the server from them and I get them to install and configure it.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Am I? I'm saying that I have a vendor and I buy the server from them and I get them to install and configure it.
That's the reseller. If they sold something other than a service, they are a reseller.
So the reseller is making your RAID decisions and hypervisor decisions? Do you have detailed installation instructions for them? How many servers are you installing? This is so little work, what's the value proposition in having them do that? What do you do for reconfigs and updates? I assume that you do those yourself?
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@scottalanmiller said:
So the reseller is making your RAID decisions and hypervisor decisions? Do you have detailed installation instructions for them?
The answer to all those questions is no. I generally only buy one server every couple of years. It's not a big deal.
I don't see why just because a company also sells hardware as well as services, they have to be a reseller. What if I get the server from elsewhere but get them to do the install? It's the same vendor doing the install. What difference does it make?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I don't see why just because a company also sells hardware as well as services, they have to be a reseller.
Because that's what the word means. This is just basic English and has nothing to do with IT or the industry or vendor relationships. The word reseller is simply the term for someone who resells stuff.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
What if I get the server from elsewhere but get them to do the install? It's the same vendor doing the install. What difference does it make?
They are still a reseller, just not your reseller.
The difference is whether or not you have expertise and ongoing support for IT work being done or if you have someone who isn't your IT staff (internal or external) doing a one off trivial IT setup job that isn't part of your normal oversight.
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Let's switch it around.... instead of trying to say why it isn't bad, why is it good? A RAID setup is faster to do than to double check and a hypervisor install is a couple of minutes and is often faster to do new than to take the time to look up what someone else did. Where is the value in having someone that isn't an integral part of the IT support network doing those very critical, but entry level, tasks? Is it saving time, money, effort somewhere?
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Well my clients pay a premium to tack a server because they pay my rate for anything server. The only other rate we have is for the Helpdesk person.
For us though, we are the entire IT department for the clients. So it is just considered part of IT.
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Advocatus Diaboli: if a vendor/reseller can't setup a server to my (exceptionally basic) specs I will no longer need their services.
Set RAID level
Install OS
Update OS
Install driversBeyond that, completely agree with you Scott.
