As of March 24, 2009, Dell changed their warranty policies for entry level servers. Essentially, no matter what the length of the warranty is with that new Dell PowerEdge server that has SATA drives, those drives are only covered for one year from the date of purchase.
Check out the last bullet under the “How long does this limited hardware warranty last?” section.
SATA hard drives in PowerEdgeTM , PowerEdge SCTM and PowerVaultTM systems launched on or after March 24, 2009 (e.g. PowerEdge T110, PowerEdge T310, PowerEdge T410, PowerEdge T610, PowerEdge T710, PowerEdge R210, PowerEdge R410, PowerEdge R510, PowerEdge R610, PowerEdge R710, PowerEdge M610, PowerEdge M710 and PowerVault NX300) carry the lesser of either a 1-year limited hardware warranty or the length of the limited hardware warranty for the Dell system with which the SATA hard drive is shipped. Service offerings may be available to extend the SATA hard drive warranty period on these systems for an additional fee.
Note the last line. An extended warranty for those drives can be obtained for a fee.
Apparently HP has also been doing this too.
- HP Q&A: What is the warranty period for a SATA drive?
A1. SATA hard drives have a one year warranty regardless of the warranty period for the system in which they are installed. Please see the below information for additional services.
Be prepared to not be surprised by this situation and make the client aware that this is the case so they are not surprised if a drive fails and they need to pay for it.
The other possibility is to look into the manufacturer’s extended warranty and support options before purchasing.
Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book
*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.
Thanks for the heads up! The entry level servers are mostly what I order and I've never seen the need to do more than the basic warranty.
ReplyDeleteAnyays, with both HP and Dell, a huge cost has always been the hard drives -- they charge WAY more than MSRP. So what I've been doing is ordering drives seperate. (With a Dell Gold account you can beat the Newegg price on RE3 and RE4 drives.) This way I get the full 5 year warranty through WD. Often it is cheaper to order the total number of drives +1 than to order them through Dell with the system. This way I have a drive new in box ready to drop in the server in case of failure so I don't have to wait on WD to send on out.
However, the drive warranty is automatically uplifted when used in a server or MSA for which a care pack is purchased.
ReplyDelete