Recently most of our Dell servers came up for warranty extensions and we decided against it. They're all 3+ years old now and replacement parts are cheaper than the Dell warranty extension. In fact the price Dell quoted us on warranty extension was about twice what these machines are going for on Ebay used right now (i.e. about $800 or for each server). I can't imagine that warranty becoming a better value over time. Recently, a 73GB 2.5" drive in one of our 1950s died. The Dell price was something insane like $350 or something, and they were just out of warranty. Put the part number into Ebay and found two guaranteed pulls for about $70 each. Ordered both and with shipping it was right at $150. So now I've got a replacement and a spare for about half the cost of the single replacement drive from Dell. And they both work just fine. I now buy hardware from a whitebox vendor who covers my whole system for 5 years. In the two years I've used them I've had four drive failures and they either let me ship it back and then get the replacement for non-urgent parts, or cross-ship with a CC charge / refund on priority drives, like for a db server. Note that we run a lot of drives and we run them ragged. This many failures is not uncommon. These machines are burnt in, and if something critical fails they just ship it out and I have the replacement the next day. And there's no bumbling idiot (other than myself) turning a screwdriver in my server without a wrist strap or a clue. -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance
