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Withdrawn hardware with near certainty is because the vendors have told
IBM that they are no longer producing that part. This happens often with
little warning. There was another feature just announced as dropped just
recently. It's a normal course of business.
Clearly part of the issue is spare parts so they do the math on what's
needed based on installed quantity and failure rates etc. They also can
get spares from IGF and you sometimes see those labeled "Servicable
spare part". There is certainly no guarantee that a replacement part is
a new part.
As to parts locations I don't think they stock much if anything local to
anywhere an longer. All the little white parts vans have been recalled
in Michigan at least and 100.0% of all parts I've dealt with for AT
LEAST the past year have had to come in via UPS to the airport. And they
have sucked at it. In one case nearly 36 hours to get the correct part
to the customer on a Sev 1 system down during the week. We also have no
technitians local to Grand Rapids any longer, the closest is an hour
away and has 3 years with IBM. He pulled the top of an operating POWER7
E4D......
And just an FYI if you might think this is a public comment that will do
no good (as it likely won't) I also wrote this up and mailed it to IBM's
CEO. I was contacted by her office but they don't get it. They think I'm
complaining about poor service on one issue. I was unable to get them to
believe that IBM's service level has fallen off the table. Once able to
leap large PMH's in a single bound they can now trip over a 2.5" hard
drive.
Fortunately here in Grand Rapids we are the home of Service Express and
their primary parts inventory. And guess who is hiring the IBM field
engineers that IBM fired for 'excess age'?? :-)
- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis
www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.
On 10/22/2019 9:57 AM, Rob Berendt wrote:
Hopefully, when the product is withdrawn from marketing that it doesn't also mean that IBM stock of replacement parts dwindles down to 3 day shipping from some remote warehouse.
Most parts aren't individually listed in maintenance costs. I'm betting that some of the drives listed there are.
Rob Berendt
midrange.com
