RE: Development box is back online

[Roger Harman <roger_harman@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Always keep the CE happy.  I told mine several times not to worry about
coming out late at night or on weekends if I felt a problem could wait.
But.... they knew that if I called at 2am and said "I need you out here now"
it meant "NOW".   And, always happy to buy them lunch/dinner.


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of rob@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2013 12:52 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Development box is back online

<snip>
IBM does have an attitude of gratitude when it comes to long term
maintenance customers.  You can't push the issue but a SNDSRVRQS *TEST can
often be enough to have a CE come onsite to tweak some little thing. Helps
to offer soda, bring back lunch, etc.  Little stuff that goes a long way.
</snip>

Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1 Group Dekko Dept 1600 Mail
to:  2505 Dekko Drive
          Garrett, IN 46738
Ship to:  Dock 108
          6928N 400E
          Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com





From:   DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To:     Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, 
Date:   05/09/2013 03:31 PM
Subject:        Re: Development box is back online
Sent by:        midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx



Pete,

                 Your record is amazing! Now before a lot of people read 
that and decide 
to cancel maintenance do consider how important the machine is to your 
business.  This stuff IS reliable but it does still fail. I HAVE seen 
processor failures, memory failures, controller failures, DASD 
Back-plane failures, and the usual DASD, Tape Drive, Tape, etc failures 
too. I've see it caused by fire, flood, lightning, fork-lift and almost 
by a roll of conveyor belt (That one got hung up just before it landed 
on the system!)
 
                 All I'm saying is eventuality everyone's luck runs out 
and if you fail 
at 5:01 on Friday with no contract, "Next Business Day" is Tuesday! 
Think about that......

         - Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 5/9/2013 3:01 PM, Pete Helgren wrote:

> I haven't had a development box with hardware
> support...well....forever.  I have never had anything but a hard drive
> fail or a raid controller battery expire.  In 20 years of ownership from
> AS/400 to the Bladecenter I have now, I have never had anything else
> fail.  Come to think of it, I have never had anything but a drive
> failure or a battery expire on a customer machine for all those years
> either.
>
> With the good Dr. Franken and others on this list, plus eBay or Amazon,
> I can pretty much expect I can get up and running in 24 hours or less if
> something fails.....(never been down for more than an hour on HW failure
> anyway).
>
> Pete Helgren
> www.petesworkshop.com
> GIAC Secure Software Programmer-Java
>
> On 5/9/2013 1:39 PM, Nathan Andelin wrote:
> > > What machine was it? it feels like a 520...
> >
> > Yes, exactly!
> >
> > > You can buy a coupe of machines for the quoted price off ebay...
> > It must have been Global Services quoting the price. Incredible labor 
costs. They can probably get away with it because when a server goes down, 
a business can go down with it.
> > If you buy off eBay, can you keep up on S/W maintenance? Our 520 is on 
7.1, and we plan on keeping it current.
> > -Nathan