SubscribeGlobal mega-corporation in good service shocker!
by Ben SummersHowever good your computer equipment is, it’ll break, especially the bits with moving parts. If you buy quality servers, you reduce the chances of breakage to more or less the day it arrives, because the courier shook it too much, or after it’s worn out from years of service.
If your business relies on always-on computing you need to do two things. Firstly, plan for failure by building and testing a system where essential parts can break but the system continues. Secondly, find a good hardware supplier who can send spare parts reliably and swiftly.
The OneIS servers are fully redundant and our hardware supplier has a great reputation, so we’re confident of the reliability of our service. But a broken fan in our newly arrived backup server gave us the chance to test our supplier sooner than expected.
Orange warning lights
Whilst installing our backup Sun X4150 server this weekend, I heard a rather interesting noise. Moments later, the orange “service required” light went on, and another orange light indicated a failed fan module.
It’s a bit annoying, but it’s not a problem. As our servers are fully redundant, a single fan can break and make no difference to keeping the server cool. Although there’s no particular urgency to replace it as the system will continue working, we were nonetheless keen to receive a replacement promptly so we could finish our infrastructure installation.
As the server had only just arrived I had yet to register it with Sun. Given that, I was expecting a bit of fun and games to get the replacement.
Who cares about the paperwork?
After being briefly misdirected by Sun’s web site, I got through to the UK support number which was answered on the first ring. I described the problem and gave the serial number of the server, to be told, as expected, that it wasn’t on the system. I explained I had only just taken it out of the box and hadn’t yet registered it, expecting to be told to go away and come back when I had filled the in the forms (in triplicate). But, to my surprise, she said she’d just do a manual support request, and I’d get a call from an engineer soon.
‘Soon’ turned out to be a mere 60 minutes. Obviously my expectations of global corporations are very low. After a brief discussion of the problem, without any depressing “have you rebooted it” checklists, we agreed a list of replacement parts. A few minutes later, I got an email from the engineer I’d spoken to, from his own email address (not a generic support address!) saying he’d ordered the parts.
Next day, the promised parts were with me at lunchtime, about 24 hours from the initial call. Of course, given the attention to detail in designing the X4150, they were really easy to fit. After filling in returns forms for the failed parts, and making a call to the courier to arrange collection, it’s all over.
So, at my reckoning, I’ve spent less time dealing with Sun and fitting the replacement parts than I would have expected to spend on the phone waiting to report the problem.
Service is key
The two things I’m most impressed about are the willingness of Sun staff to take personal ownership of the issue, and that they care more about fixing the problem than the corporate bureaucracy.
At OneIS, we pride ourselves on our level of service to our clients, taking personal responsibility for seeing any issue through to a successful resolution. It’s a very reassuring to see that our hardware supplier, a massive global corporation, has similar ideas.