Never Let the Vendor Set Up a Server
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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.
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@MattSpeller said:
Advocatus Diaboli: if a vendor/reseller can't setup a server to my (exceptionally basic) specs I will no longer need their services.
That seems a weird reason to not use them. While those things are incredibly basic, the more basic they are the less reason to make them a selection criteria for a vendor that does not understand their nuances and their applicability to your environment. Yes, not following directions reliably is bad, but this is not in their wheelhouse and is in yours. Why select them based on their ability to do your job rather than on the value of their own?
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@MattSpeller said:
Set RAID level
Install OS
Update OS
Install driversThese are all tasks that you must be competent in and must verify to reliably run servers. Even if a reseller can do this reliably and does it for free, I don't feel that you should ever allow them to do so in order to find out if they can or not. These are standard operational tasks. That the server is being freshly delivered is a very odd break in standard process to have that one special case where a third party does a one time, highly critical engineering setup on your behalf.
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@scottalanmiller it's common to have that basic stuff included for cheaper than I could do it, or often free. Why would I use a vendor/reseller who wouldn't offer such a basic service? I mean it's not a make or break thing by any means, but certainly saves me a few hours of poke & wait.
