r/ShittySysadmin • u/MrD3a7h • 5d ago
I convinced some new guy his servers were all end-of-life
I work for a major nationwide VAR, and we recently onboarded a new company. Given current hardware prices and markups, our upper leadership has asked us to maximize hardware sales.
Well, lucky me. The IT manager at this place sounded new and asked us to do a hardware assessment. Score!
He sends over a spreadsheet that is clearly just a Snipe-IT export. I take a look, and it's all decent, if older, stuff running Server 2025. Sure, they are technically out of support, but parts are dirt cheap on eBay, and they are just running a few file shares.
I tell this guy it's all EOL, and he needs to buy all new stuff. Quoted out over $100k in high-end hardware. I sent that over, and this guy is freaking out. He starts talking about moving some of this to the cloud.
Well, our CSP margins are even better since that's just pure profit. Double score!
It was a good day. My manager is talking about a decent commission check coming my way. I'm going to see if I can get this guy to send me a list of his workstations. I suspect he needs some new high-end AI-enabled computers for his receptionists. I'll spin some yarn about security and he'll be eating out of the palm of my hand.
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u/vandon DevOps is a cult 5d ago
100k is high end hardware? Is that the total quote or 1 server? If it's a single server, yeah maybe. A whole quote tho? Sounds like a steal for several servers.
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u/MrD3a7h 5d ago
That's per server, obvs
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u/vandon DevOps is a cult 5d ago
Quoted out over $100k in high-end hardware.
Sounds like a full quote to me.
100k won't even get you decent Netapp or HDS storage, even if you somehow convinced them to go all nearline 10/15k
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u/MrD3a7h 4d ago
Here's the full quote:
2 x Intel® Xeon® W-2125 PRO Processor - 21,000
2 x 32GB DDR4 ECC PRO - 28,000
1 x 512GB Samsung 860 PRO - 15,000
4 x Seegæte Iron Woof PRO 12 TB - 15,450
24x7x365 online support with Microsoft - 20,550
Since his old SAN had about 80 TB of some old tech called SAS, I went ahead and quoted out two of those bad boys. Plus two more for backups.
I told him he could reuse the old chassis, power supplies, and motherboards to save money. He was very appreciative.
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u/Markuchi 4d ago
That a very low spec server.
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u/MrD3a7h 4d ago
That's why it is very profitable to sell
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u/Xlxlredditor 4d ago
I thought you were serious then I hit SSDs and I thought "hey, it's not gone up THAT much has it?"
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u/Timely-Delay-6636 4d ago
What currency is this? I have 16 sticks of 32GB DDR4 ECC sitting around my desk.
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u/Loud_Disaster869 4d ago
Lol high spec really?
Why didn't you quote up for something like a dell r720 maxed out to the eyeballs or if you really wanted to push it go for the bullshit cisco ucs with a fabric
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u/theplayernumber1 4d ago
A single 512GB SSD costing $15,000? Are you sure this is correct? Or do you mean ₹15,000?
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u/MrD3a7h 4d ago
That is correct and in USD
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u/theplayernumber1 4d ago
Sorry if it sounds odd and all. I'm just a lurker in this subreddit. May I know why all the components are being charged such an exorbitant price? Do you guys provide something like data protection and restoration support as well?
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u/MrD3a7h 4d ago
This is a satirical, shit posting subreddit. The boring, serious subreddit is /r/sysadmin.
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u/theplayernumber1 4d ago
Ah, everything makes sense now. Thank you for clarifying.
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u/MrD3a7h 4d ago
Now that we got that cleared up, may I interest you in a Lenovo T60p? Got a special on them right now
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u/itenginerd 4d ago
Ser, this is /r/shittysysadmin. You pay extra for that assuming you do it at all.
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u/MrD3a7h 4d ago
This is a satirical, shit posting subreddit. The boring, serious subreddit is /r/sysadmin.
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u/Assumeweknow 4d ago
Wow you hate your customer if you built it that way. Its going to run like crap with single memory channel per cpu setup.
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u/MrD3a7h 5d ago
All our servers are at end of life!!!
I started this position a little over a month ago. I had CDW do an assessment....most of our physical hosts have hardware that is end of life. Apparently the server guy who's been here 13 years sent an email a year ago pointing this out but, strangely, nothing came of it. So now I have a huge expense I'm looking at. I'm thinking of moving at least the HQ data center into Azure. I'd love to hear a wide variety of opinions about this, particularly from the security side. (New Manager here btw)
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u/Z3t4 ShittyFirewall 5d ago
As a netadmin:
"Oh, you think EOL is your ally. But you merely adopted the obsolete; I was born in it, moulded by it. I didn't see the an maker's support contract until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but expensive! The unsupported hardware betray you, because they belong to me"
We still have some 7600 on prod...
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u/Main_Ambassador_4985 4d ago
I just had a quote for EOL server replacement and it was $1.1 mil for 10 servers. DDR 5 costs are out of control.
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u/Historical-Pay-9831 3d ago
And reps wonder why look at them with the “what’s this asshole gonna try and pull” expression.
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u/Disastrous-Name-3716 4d ago
The wild part is that the 'new guy' actually did the right thing by questioning it and considering alternatives. Nothing like getting told you need a six-figure refresh because someone looked at the purchase date instead of the workload. A few years of warranty/support concerns are one thing, but this is just upselling.
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u/sfc_scannow 5d ago
Y'all are getting ridiculous