[DRBD-user] Isn't the support contract rather expensive?

Helmut Wollmersdorfer helmut.wollmersdorfer at gmx.at
Mon Aug 22 12:16:50 CEST 2005

Note: "permalinks" may not be as permanent as we would like,
direct links of old sources may well be a few messages off.


Lars Ellenberg wrote:

>>I just looked at the price and it's seems to be incredibly expensive.
>>For one thing, it seems that duration of the contracts is for three
>>months. That in of itself is odd. Who wants support for such a short
>>period? Aren't most contracts a year?

> Thanks for the input, I'll escalate that to sales.
> In any case, I'd like to hear some other voices on the matter, too.
> This could be an interessting discussion.
> And probably in the interesst of the drbd user comunity, too.

I don't know the usual expert-fee per hour of Linbit. But if I have to 
repair my car (window, heating etc.) they invoice me EUR 70 - 90 per hour.

If I look at 
http://www.linbit.com/en/solutions/enterprise/linhac/drbd-support/

INSTALLATION support

With this support package you get one month of installation support by 
email and acces to the prebuild RPMs for 12 month.

Duration: 1 Month (+12 months access to all prebuild RPM's)
Price excl. VAT: EUR 150,-

This compares e.g. to VMWare Workstation USD ~200,- (license only) or 
WinXP EUR 160,- (license only).

Applying a usal fee for an IT-expert the EUR 150,- covers ~2 hours,
the BASIC SUPPORT EUR 390,- covers ~5 hours. If a customer consumes more 
hours of support to "get" ... "High-Availability Clusters running. All 
DRBD and cluster management software topics as well as related issues 
are covered." the customer is a winner (and Linbit the looser).

E.g. the last package I developed needed 30 hours _after_ finishment - 
10 hours change request, 2 hours repair and test of a bug, and 18 hours 
installation support. I would have been a big looser, if I commited to 5 
hours of support (what I estimated).

I think, it would be fair, to offer support on hourly base as an 
additional possibility. E.g. a customer can buy a bucket of 5 (10, 20 
...) hours and gets support as long as the hours are not consumed.

Helmut Wollmersdorfer



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