UNIX System Administration Handbook - Evi Nemeth [441]
24.2 MAINTENANCE CONTRACTS
Several major companies offer hardware maintenance on computer equipment that they do not manufacture. These vendors are often anxious to displace the manufacturer and get their foot in the door, so to speak. You can sometimes negotiate very attractive maintenance contracts by playing a manufacturer against a third-party provider. If possible, get references on all potential maintenance vendors, preferably from people you know and trust.
It is rare for any maintenance provider to diagnose problems beyond the board level. Old joke: “How many customer engineers does it take to fix a flat tire? Four—one to replace each wheel.” It is not unusual for a customer engineer to simply swap boards until the system starts working again.
A typical maintenance call involves several steps; policies vary.
On-site maintenance
If you have an on-site maintenance contract, a service technician will bring spare parts directly to your machine. Guaranteed response time varies between 4 and 24 hours; it’s usually spelled out in the contract. Response times during business hours may be shorter than at other times of the week.
Board swap maintenance
A board swap program requires you and your staff to diagnose problems, perhaps with the help of hotline personnel at the manufacturer’s site. After diagnosis, you call a maintenance number, describe the problem, and order the necessary replacement board. It is usually shipped immediately and arrives the next day. You then install the board, get the hardware back up and happy, and return the old board in the same box in which the new board arrived.
The manufacturer will often want to assign a “return merchandise authorization” (RMA) number to the transaction. Be sure to write that number on the shipping documents when you return the bad board.
Warranties
The length of the manufacturer’s warranty should play a significant role in your computation of a machine’s lifetime cost of ownership. Three months’ warranty is standard for computers, but warranties of a year or more are not uncommon.
In a university environment, it seems to be easier to get federal funding for capital equipment than for support personnel or maintenance. We have occasionally paid for an “extended warranty” option on new hardware (which could also be described as prepaid maintenance) to convert equipment dollars to maintenance dollars.
If you order a computer system from several vendors, the parts will not necessarily arrive at the same time. The warranty period should not start until all the equipment is there and the system has been installed. Most vendors are cooperative about delaying the beginning of the warranty period (for a month or two). With many pieces of hardware, the biggest maintenance and reliability problems occur quite soon after installation. Hardware failures that occur within a day or two of installation are referred to as “infant mortality.”
24.3 BOARD-HANDLING LORE
These days, you rarely need to get into the guts of a system to install or remove circuit boards. PC-based systems are perhaps an exception, as they seem to require at least four or five add-on boards to reach workstation standards (SCSI, sound, video, network, memory... Hmm, what’s on that motherboard anyway?).
Circuit boards should be handled gently, not dropped, not have coffee spilled on them, not have books piled on them, etc. Most customer engineers (those friendly repair people that come with your maintenance contract) are ten times rougher on boards than seems reasonable.
Static electricity
Electronic parts are sensitive to static electricity. To handle boards safely, you must ground yourself before and during installation. A ground strap worn on the wrist and attached to a special mat that you kneel on (most computers require you to show proper respect!) will ground you properly.
Remember that you need to worry about static when you first open