gigamatic

so, this morning, one of the fileservers in one of our areas started to die. it was a fairly important box, and needs to be replaced rather quickly, as it houses nearly a terabyte of data.

you wouldnt think there would be a lot of drama, would you? normally, you'd spec out a couple boxes and make the order with our preferred (our dept preferred) vendor.

well... we need it fast. we need quality. we need same-day service.

as part of the office of the university which made the deal with the vendor they chose, we need to justify NOT using that vendor. to the powers that be.

well... lets see. 2 week turnaround, if we're lucky. twice the price, for sure. next day service, not same day.

yeah. that's just as good. not. even that crazy third hardware vendor nobody wants to use came in at a better value than the one with the million-dollar deal.

So now, we're still waiting for an answer. For nearly 8 hours, we've been without that server. How many more days will we wait while my boss's boss's boss decides whether we're allowed to go with a different (our normal) vendor!?

Needless to say, the area with the failing server is going crazy with anticipation and frustration. AAAAAAARGH!

(With the savings going with our favorite vendor, we could afford to buy a whole other server... preferably for me! I saw 2.4GHz 1U high 4-drive RAIDs for $3k... I'll take 2, please!)

Update: since we're directly under the dealmakers, we are mandated to use the expensive vendor. yes, that's right, they cost >30% more, and thats not including the service contract, and we MUST buy them. That makes sense.

Welcome to Crazytown.