RE: Development box is back online

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