On Thu, 4 Sep 1997 sirbruce@ix.netcom.com wrote:

|On 09/03/97 21:04:48 you wrote: |>Netapp *really* does its customers a disservice but its RIDICULOUS |>pricing on common accessories. |> |>$1950 list for a F/W Cuda 4 from netapp...and they offered us this |>*incredible* 15% discount...wow $1657.50... |> |>Tech Data had the same drive for $665. |> |>I love our toasters, but someone in netapp marketing really needs to |>get a grip on reality. |> |>Jonah | |I take the Devil's Advocate (and probably unpopular) position. |Sure, everyone would love to be able to get the parts cheaper, |but that carries a higher risk unless you are using approved |parts. The parts Netapp sells you are going to be tested to |some extent. The failure rate of disk drives is very high; |you are paying a premium partly for that reliability testing. | |You may think you see the same part elsewhere... but is it |*really* the same part? Is the drive's firmware version the |same? What about the NIC card's ethernet chip revision? Or |firmware on your FDDI or ATM card? Those things do matter, |and just because you may have a third-party component that |appears to work doesn't mean it doesn't have a lingering bug, |or that it won't stop working in a subsequent software release |due to Netapp changing their drivers. Would you want to risk |explaining to your boss that the filesystem is trashed or the |server won't come back up because you decided to save a few |hundred or even a thousand dollars on an acessory, and that |Network Appliance can't be blamed for the failure?

I might agree with you if I didn't have experience with netapp's RMA department. We have been shipped replacement motherboards with *mismatched* DRAM simms in them from netapp. All accessories we put in our netapps are *Exactly* the same part numbers as what netapp uses. Down to the same Samsung Simms that netapp does, the same Seagate drives that netapp does, the *same* DEC Storageworks canisters, the *same* dallas semiconductor nvram.

Guess what...it all works *perfectly* as expected, plus with the 70% savings we can have triple spares onsite :P

|Now, that having been said, I do agree that many of the prices |are steeper than I would like to see as a customer, and I |think they need to be reduced to discourage customers from |doing what I described above and getting into some serious |trouble. But I personally wouldn't risk an unapproved component, |and I would be remiss in not advising others to avoid it as |well.

I was not talking about unapproved components. I would *never* risk the chance of a failure due to an unapproved component. I do however have a problem with paying 200-300% *more* for the same accessories.

This is good short term cashflow for netapp, but bad long term business. If it wasn't for the fact of the ridiculous markup on the netapp accessories I would have even taken out to bid our most recent requirement for addiotional filers. Netapp could very well win the business, but you can be assured we won't be buying any drives/dram from netapp for our new filers.

Jonah

Jonah Barron Yokubaitis | Austin|San Antonio|Houston President | Dallas|Fort Worth|Boerne Texas.Net | Georgetown|Dripping Springs http://www.texas.net | Making 56k affordable