[Beowulf] SLAs was Re: GPU boards and cluster servers.

[Lux, James P]

> Again, I'm not picking on Dell specifically. I've seen this behavior
> with other large vendors. My point is that "on-site support" usually
> isn't always, so don't believe the hype.

I think highly of HP service and HP hardware in general.  we always spec onsite/NBD support.  at first, we spent a lot of time talking through
tier-1 support, but fairly quickly were given ways to bypass that.
I don't think we paid extra, but I also don't think HP's giving it as charity, since an HPC site will typically have just a few, clueful contacts opening cases, who can efficiently interact with higher-level support.  I don't really have signficant data for any other vendor.

for small sites or individuals, it make a lot of sense (for the vendor) to try to filter out some of the randomness of support calls before committing a person.  of course, a good CRM system would help this - perhaps that's why RGB gets satisfaction from Dell...

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Not exactly CRM..  he calls up and says "this is rgb, and I need assistance"... The level zero phone weenie thinks "TLA(three letter acronym/agency)! Important!" and presses the red button on the call distributor keyboard.  If he called and identified himself as "Professor Brown from Duke", then he'd be in the queue with the rest of us, speculating about the weather in Hyderabad or Bangalore.

Jim