Our second office houses finance, payroll and about two hundred people. Its network runs through a single stack of switches in a small comms room on the first floor, and for years I was comfortable with that, because the switches were covered by a next business day hardware support contract. If something failed, an engineer would arrive the following day with a replacement. That was what I believed the contract said.
In February one of the two power supplies in the main switch failed on a Tuesday afternoon. The switch carried on running on the other one, the alert reached us within minutes, and we logged the fault with the support company. An engineer arrived on Wednesday morning as promised. He looked at the switch, confirmed the fault and told us the part was on back order. The model had reached end of sale the year before, and replacement power supplies were being allocated as the manufacturer made them. The estimate was six weeks.
For six weeks the office that pays our staff ran on one power supply. Payroll closed in that period, and the payroll manager asked me twice what would happen if the second one went. The honest answer was that the floor would lose its network until we borrowed a switch from somewhere else and rebuilt the configuration by hand.
When I read the contract properly, it was clear enough. Next business day described when the supplier would respond. Parts were supplied subject to availability. Nothing in it was hidden. I had read a promise about attendance as a promise about repair.
Now every piece of equipment whose failure would stop a site has a named spare. For the comms rooms that means a spare power supply and a spare switch of the same model, kept on site, with the current configuration stored centrally so it can be loaded in minutes. Before we renew a hardware contract we ask the supplier how many of our parts they hold in this country, and any model within a year of end of sale goes on the replacement plan. Twice a year an engineer swaps a spare into service, so we know it works.
The spares cost less than one month of the support contract. A support contract tells you who will come. It does not always tell you what they will be carrying.
– Serguey Shinder
