On 03/26/98 10:52:18 you wrote:
In message Chameleon.980326065754.dpower@blue.insync.net, David Power writ es:
Have you priced 630 memory lately? I was quoted $12,000 for a 32 meg nvram, 256 meg system ram upgrade. Thats not dropping to me.
We just paid NetApp $4000 to up the NVRAM on our F330 from 2MB to 8MB. That's over $650 for each 1MB SIMM! When I asked our Sales Rep about the cost, I was quoted the "We do in house testing" line. Anyway, two of the SIMMs we were sent were bad... Very disappointing.
Exactly how were they "bad"? Did they not work when you added them, or did they work but you had to troubleshoot crashes that caused you to swap them out, etc.? Netapp does indeed do testing that catches bad SIMMs from the vendor, but it can't catch problems where the SIMM is damaged after testing in handling, or in shipping, or improperly inserted into the board. Sometimes the time at which a SIMM will fail in the future is beyond their horizon of testing. It seems to me getting it straight from the vendor is only going to increase your chances of failure, unless maybe there is a particular vendor with which Netapp has rarely encountered failures.
Does it justify increased price? Hard to say. Depends upon the atmosphere of the company/environment your in. If it's like many bosses I know, the increased price isn't worth it until a component fails, and then they get upset that you didn't get better quality. :)
Bruce