Sun Maintenance Summary

[David Rochberg]

Thanks for all the responses to my Sun maintenence question.  Since I got
more Me Too ' s than I did info, I have decided to summarize.  

This is the original message

>My father is in the administrative decision-making group for a network of
>Suns (A 4/260 server and about 5 3/60 clients.)  He has been approached by
>some people from Motorola who are offering a significantly less expensive
>service contract (on the order of $10k/year hardware + software.)  Does
>anyone know how good these guys are ?  Does anyone have any
>caveats/recommendations on this general topic?  Please e-mail responses,
>as I don't have the time to read this group and they don't have a
>newsfeed.

vrdxhq!escom.com!al at uunet.UU.NET (Al Donaldson) writes . . .

I'm using Motorola (hardware only, next day reaction) and I'm fairly much
pleased with them.  Of course, ESCOM is real small (1 person) and so cost
( < $100/month for Sun 3/50 with shoebox) was important.  I probably
wouldn't have gone for this except that I have a contract that isn't going
to let me be dead in the water for more than a day or so.

So far, Motorola has replaced my B&W display for some minor problems.
Even though the level of service only calls for them to show up and look
at the problem by the next day, they had it fixed within 24 hours of
calling.

AARON KONSTAM <AKONSTAM at TRINITY.BITNET> writes . . . 

I was highly pleased with the work done by Motorola in fixins one of our
monitors for several reasons:
1. Their quoted price was 40% cheaper than Sun's
2. They sent us a box to use to ship the monitor. Sun was willing to rent
us a box for $100.
3. And this is unheard of, Motorola charged us only half of the price they
quoted; Iguess because it was less costly to fix then they thought it
would be. Try to get that kind of arrangement from Sun.

Sun I will admit honors their service contracts but they are very
expensive. Motorola seems a good alternative.

A person who requests that his name not be given says . . .

We have both Motorola and Sun systems here.  I use Sun Maintance for our
Sun systems and Mot for theirs.  Motorola has approached me several times
on using them to maintain our Sun systems.  I have always turned them down
because Sun is much more responsive when there is a problem.  It may be
just the guys here but it seems that when I have a problem with a Mot
system, half the time they don't have the part in stock, or they didn't
bring the right piece with them.  <stuff deleted>

(If you absolutely must talk with this person, I will keep his address and
forward mail to him.)

mailrus!mairi%teraida%netcom%claris%ames (Mairi McKissock) wrote a long
(and helpful) message that I will paraphrase . . .

It suggests that one do the following:

1. Decide what level of service you need (Same day service, next-day
   service, on-site, by-mail etc. )

2. Determine who offers the service you need.  Sun, Motorola, CDC, and
   McDonnel Douglass were all mentioned.  Mairi notes that Sun offers the
   most flexible plans.

3. Ask the companies to present quotes to you im person.  Ask for details
   and refrences. Remind them that you are looking at other bids. Ask about
   the following things" guarantees on time to call back, time to get an
   engineer on site; will you get a particular engineer assigned to your
   site, or will calls be dealt with by whoever is free?; how often do they
   arrange PM?; will they commit to keeping equipment up to published Sun
   part revision levels?; do they operate on a part replacement or repair
   policy?"

The message also suggests that you make sure the service people will be
able to get replacement parts fairly quickly. It concludes by warning
people to start with a one-year contract so that they can get out if they
were dissatisfied.

jana at tahoe.unr.edu (Jana Dunn) writes . . .

We have a very small sun network (a 3/280 and 4 3/50's, two diskless) and
we have a Motorola hardware maintenance contract. We initially had a
contract with Sun, but the service was unacceptable, so the next year we
switched to Motorola. The Motorola service is acceptable, but not
outstanding. Part of our problem is our remote location; the nearest
Motorola office is in Sacramento, over the Sierras.  The nearest Sun
office is in Las Vegas, a full day's drive.  Motorola has a CE who lives
about 60 miles from here who works out of his house--that's who answers
our calls.  Any time he needs parts, they need to be flown in from Texas
or California, with the attendant delays.  A few months ago we were down
for a *week* with disk problems.  This was partly my fault--I didn't start
calling supervisors and whatnot until we'd been down for a few days.  But
I don't think one should have to do things like that.  There are some
problems with Motorola's escalation procedures.  However, once we got
escalated to the "red hot" level, we got very good service.  Motorola does
not (of course) have access to Sun's in-house hardware bugs database.
This can be a big problem.

 <Stuff deleted> 

Motorola also has no hardware diagnostics for Sun systems.  I don't know
if Sun has any either.  We still have Sun software support, which I find
to be pretty good.  I would not switch to Motorola for that.  Without the
Sun bugs database, our trickiest problems would be insolvable.  In sum: 

1. If you are getting good service from Sun and can manage to pay the
   bills, stick with them.  Good service is worth the price.
2. If Sun is totally unacceptable, Motorola will probably seem better.  
3. How far away a main office or supply center is from your location may
   make a difference in your decision.

Incidently, our sun fileserver is down right now with two dead memory
boards.  Once of the dead ones was a replacement board the Motorola guy
put in 3 days ago.  Sigh.

ack at water.ca.gov (David Ackerman) writes:

I would have to say that the experiences we have had here at DWR with
Motorola maintenance for Suns has not been a positive one. We have a 4/260
that has had several CPU swaps, and the way Motorola handled the repairs
made us a bit uncomfortable (they didn't seem to know what they were doing
at times, and had to come back several times). The machine was dead for
several weeks at one point. We have never experienced this with Sun
maintenance.

There are other companies (such as Apex) that do Sun maintenance, but I do
not know anything about them.

********************************

Please remember that these people are giving personal opinions and not
speaking for their employers !!!!

Once again, thank yous to all who took the time to send info.

			-David Rochberg
			rock at wubios.wustl.edu
			david at david.wustl.edu

X-Subject: Sun Summary addenda. . .

Here is another letter I found lying around my account.  Sorry it wasn't
posted with the rest of the summary.  (Original article asked about
Motorola maintenance for suns)

cwl at odi.com writes . . .

Moto is ok for service.  We use them ourselves.  They've delivered what
they said they would so far.  My only complaint is that administratively I
sometimes have to prod them to get a few little things cleared up.  This
does not impact the service we receive though.  Also, this may be due to
the particular local office that we use.  I have no real complaints about
them, and I think they're as good as sun, if not better.

Be aware that they are mostly a card swapping house.  We call them up and
tell them to bring over a new X, and they do.  We receive a 5% discount
for acting as first point of analysis on problems.