Looking for virtualization advice
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Example. I need a server. I can call Dell, HPE, Oracle, IBM, Cisco, etc. and get quotes. Or I can just look up what they cost. The final numbers will be close in relative terms as they will all discount similarly. I don't need a VAR for that at the higher levels.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@john-nicholson said in Looking for virtualization advice:
This cult of "Don't talk to the vendor until it's time to pull the trigger" is moronic. Even if you work for a classified site, vendors have sales teams who have the required clearances to openly discuss what you need to do.
Not really. The vendor cult of "hide it all and make it unique to every customer" is moronic. It's a drive to make it impossible for customer IT to do real comparisons and to make only large vendors have enough mind share to get enough time taken with them to bother doing quotes. Quotes don't take 30 minutes, no matter what any vendor says. They are costly and time consuming and automatically make a vendor dramatically harder to justify working with because they increase the cost of "friction" with said vendor.
The reason it is unique is that the costs are unique to each customer, and vendors compete against each other for discounts for specific groups.
Everyone discounts education (Because they have volume and typically lower capital budgets) but no one discounts their support contracts (because they are understaffed and lean heavily on support). Citibank is more often than not only going to call support because they have found a bug. They, on the other hand, will likely get stiff discounts of support renewals.
If you don't align your costs against your competition or your customer's costs imposed on your support organization you will fail. Anything else is just Soviet pricing strategies.
Some products often have 50 features. Some deployments will need all of those features (and therefore likely get discounted less as there is less competition, as well as incur higher support fee's). Some deployments will need fewer features and have 50 other options. A mixture of tiered products (With sub features) helps solve this elastic price problem, but at a certain point being ala-cart for all features makes it insane to figure out what to buy. Empowering sales managers to on the fly adjust discounts say for more competitive deals with fewer needs enables the SKU Sprawl to be lower, customers to get more for their money and profit to be optimized.
THe ONLY way to achieve what you're asking for is radical reduction in SKU sprawl.
This reminds me of the argument that Microsoft should throw all features into SQL standard and not hold them out for more expensive enterprise or that Windows Server shouldn't need CALs. This is bad a for a huge number of reasons.This wouldn't work as no one could afford SQL or Windows Server anymore (It would get priced optimally for large enterprises) and Microsoft would loose a shed load of profit from smaller shops. The long and the short of it is Stock holder obligations prevent this, it would kill revenue.
Note, these little lovely startups you see that offer simple pricing gradually transition away from it as they get mature offerings (or risk leaving money on the table like Microsoft). Nutanix has gone from 1 to 3 different editions, for now, multiple products. Equallogic didn't add SKU's but they became too expensive vs. alternatives as they gained too many features to serve the low end of the market.
Only products that serve commodity markets can have simple, transparent pricing.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
Example. I need a server. I can call Dell, HPE, Oracle, IBM, Cisco, etc. and get quotes. Or I can just look up what they cost. The final numbers will be close in relative terms as they will all discount similarly. I don't need a VAR for that at the higher levels.
Except it's not that simple in a world of OEM's competing to take over your datacenter.
The discount %'s will vary wildly. Cisco will potentially be negative if bundled with a switch or an ACI license.
Dell will go into crazy eddy mode if you hit the magic "Storage, Software, Server, Switch" (4S's on a quote). A vSAN disk loaded R630 with some switches I swear triggers a party mode for the lights in the round rock call centers.
HPE if you are willing to look at Synergy where they are hungry for Logo's will start throwing hardware at you for free.
Oracle if you will sign an Oracle ELA (MUHAHAHAHA YOU'LL NEVER HAVE YOUR SOUL BACK), will do interesting things with hardware prices.
Tell the vendor it's a competitive deal and say who they are competing against and see if you get an extra 4-10% off...
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@john-nicholson said in Looking for virtualization advice:
Knowing list is honestly useless when you don't know what discounts will apply in a quarter, or for what products. A lot of vendors have a small handful products every quarter that get an extra 30% off "power play". If you get a quote that's good for the quarter but don't keep in touch with the VAR you might miss the discount (not that you need to buy things you don't need, but it may throw off your budgeting). This is why you gota talk to your VARs!
I don't agree. Because all vendors do this. So knowing list really does give you 90% of what you need. And if a vendor throws away business because they do stupid public pricing is their own loss. Most vendors know not to do that, this is basic IT. So while knowing list doesn't tell you what you will pay, it does give you reasonable basis for comparison because everyone will have a sale quarterly that you can account for.
There are vendors where discount off list is normally 10%, there are ones where it's normally 70% (Meraki, from a MSP who does a lot of volumes). Often those standard discount rates can vary between product lines for the same vendor, especially if they are not fully integrated into the same partner network.
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@john-nicholson said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@john-nicholson said in Looking for virtualization advice:
Knowing list is honestly useless when you don't know what discounts will apply in a quarter, or for what products. A lot of vendors have a small handful products every quarter that get an extra 30% off "power play". If you get a quote that's good for the quarter but don't keep in touch with the VAR you might miss the discount (not that you need to buy things you don't need, but it may throw off your budgeting). This is why you gota talk to your VARs!
I don't agree. Because all vendors do this. So knowing list really does give you 90% of what you need. And if a vendor throws away business because they do stupid public pricing is their own loss. Most vendors know not to do that, this is basic IT. So while knowing list doesn't tell you what you will pay, it does give you reasonable basis for comparison because everyone will have a sale quarterly that you can account for.
There are vendors where discount off list is normally 10%, there are ones where it's normally 70% (Meraki, from a MSP who does a lot of volumes). Often those standard discount rates can vary between product lines for the same vendor, especially if they are not fully integrated into the same partner network.
True, but Meraki is a product you'd never use anyway. Of actual quality products and vendors, do you ever see this happening?
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I must be doing something wrong. How do you all work and have time for such (great!) in depth discussions, here and in other threads. I'm trying to be an active participant in this conversation but I'm not doing a great job at it. For that, I apologize.
We are mostly a Windows shop, but we (and I'm sure this will open up another stream of discussion) also use Avaya, managed by a service provider. We are looking to add SIP and an IVR solution. I just was told Avaya will not support (at this time) anything other than VMware. It looks like this takes Scale out of the running. We have equipment in 5 NA locations and over 500 phones, so management is not looking to move to anything else at this time.
@JaredBusch - I have some questions regarding your earlier comments on our "a bit abnormal" file server size. Should I start a separate thread for this?
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@john-nicholson said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@john-nicholson said in Looking for virtualization advice:
This cult of "Don't talk to the vendor until it's time to pull the trigger" is moronic. Even if you work for a classified site, vendors have sales teams who have the required clearances to openly discuss what you need to do.
Not really. The vendor cult of "hide it all and make it unique to every customer" is moronic. It's a drive to make it impossible for customer IT to do real comparisons and to make only large vendors have enough mind share to get enough time taken with them to bother doing quotes. Quotes don't take 30 minutes, no matter what any vendor says. They are costly and time consuming and automatically make a vendor dramatically harder to justify working with because they increase the cost of "friction" with said vendor.
The reason it is unique is that the costs are unique to each customer, and vendors compete against each other for discounts for specific groups.
Everyone discounts education (Because they have volume and typically lower capital budgets) but no one discounts their support contracts (because they are understaffed and lean heavily on support). Citibank is more often than not only going to call support because they have found a bug. They, on the other hand, will likely get stiff discounts of support renewals.
If you don't align your costs against your competition or your customer's costs imposed on your support organization you will fail. Anything else is just Soviet pricing strategies.
Some products often have 50 features. Some deployments will need all of those features (and therefore likely get discounted less as there is less competition, as well as incur higher support fee's). Some deployments will need fewer features and have 50 other options. A mixture of tiered products (With sub features) helps solve this elastic price problem, but at a certain point being ala-cart for all features makes it insane to figure out what to buy. Empowering sales managers to on the fly adjust discounts say for more competitive deals with fewer needs enables the SKU Sprawl to be lower, customers to get more for their money and profit to be optimized.
THe ONLY way to achieve what you're asking for is radical reduction in SKU sprawl.
This reminds me of the argument that Microsoft should throw all features into SQL standard and not hold them out for more expensive enterprise or that Windows Server shouldn't need CALs. This is bad a for a huge number of reasons.This wouldn't work as no one could afford SQL or Windows Server anymore (It would get priced optimally for large enterprises) and Microsoft would loose a shed load of profit from smaller shops. The long and the short of it is Stock holder obligations prevent this, it would kill revenue.
Note, these little lovely startups you see that offer simple pricing gradually transition away from it as they get mature offerings (or risk leaving money on the table like Microsoft). Nutanix has gone from 1 to 3 different editions, for now, multiple products. Equallogic didn't add SKU's but they became too expensive vs. alternatives as they gained too many features to serve the low end of the market.
Only products that serve commodity markets can have simple, transparent pricing.
This just feels like an excuse. How hard is it to make complex pricing transparent? It's not. The issue isn't that it is hard, it is that the Moroccan bazaar is advantageous to large vendors with trained sales people who can keep you from getting the big discounts but make you buy anyway. It's all a push to get you into an emotional position so that you will over pay or not go to a lower cost competitor.
There are exceptional products with really high complexity. But even working in the financial sector, this is extremely rare. It's just vendors that don't value the time of the customers.
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@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:
We are looking to add SIP and an IVR solution. I just was told Avaya will not support (at this time) anything other than VMware.
Drop them. Not because of VMware, because this is a ridiculous "we don't support our customers and don't live in the modern world" stance. This suggests that they are running out of support resources and are no longer a trusted, viable vendor. Plus, it's Avaya, this isn't the 1990s, no need to be paying high costs for basic telephony services.
Think about this.... how much is the cost of Avaya, then how much is the cost of needing support for phones because you have the complexity of Avaya, then how much is the cost of VMware because it is all that they support, then how much is the cost of management of VMware because you are forced into it. All of that is part of the cost of your Avaya phones.
Have you looked at something like FreePBX that is free? You can get support more easily, I'd wager, than for the Avaya and it is a modern product that hasn't been abandoned by its vendor (a vendor on the brink of bankruptcy, I believe we've heard.) THen if you choose VMware it will be because it was the right product for you, not because you were (and are) trapped with it because of one bad piece of legacy software.
Think of the Avaya as technical dept to be removed.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
(a vendor on the brink of bankruptcy, I believe we've heard.)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-avaya-bankruptcy-idUSKBN1AN1Y9
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@dashrender said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
(a vendor on the brink of bankruptcy, I believe we've heard.)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-avaya-bankruptcy-idUSKBN1AN1Y9
Ha, so they are coming out of bankruptcy soon? Still, in an appliance vendor, that's the end of the line. Your appliance is 100% dependent on their remaining viable for the lifetime of your device. Avaya isn't a bad company, but their products are priced for another era (which they are from) and don't make very much sense in the modern world.
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@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@JaredBusch - I have some questions regarding your earlier comments on our "a bit abnormal" file server size. Should I start a separate thread for this?
It is relevant to this discussion so your call.
I used that phrase intentionally, because it is abnormal, but not exceptional based on an assumption of user count. You could have way more users than I am guestimating.
You could also have something more than office documents as I mentioned in the earlier post. A company that deals with video editing will have drastically more needs for drive space than a basic company that sells widgets.
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@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:
I must be doing something wrong. How do you all work and have time for such (great!) in depth discussions, here and in other threads. I'm trying to be an active participant in this conversation but I'm not doing a great job at it. For that, I apologize.
Automate your work. At my prior employer, someone tried to report me for fucking around online all day. But my boss knew I was simply browsing the web while scripts were executing.
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@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:
We are mostly a Windows shop, but we (and I'm sure this will open up another stream of discussion) also use Avaya, managed by a service provider. We are looking to add SIP and an IVR solution. I just was told Avaya will not support (at this time) anything other than VMware. It looks like this takes Scale out of the running. We have equipment in 5 NA locations and over 500 phones, so management is not looking to move to anything else at this time.
Nothing wrong with a Windows shop (no matter what @scottalanmiller says).
Avaya is junk, do not add anything to it. Replace it instead. The costs will probably not be hugely different.
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@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:
ce.
Currently we have mostly physical Windows servers (yes, I know it is 2017) in this data center consisting of:Have you done a DPACK on the existing servers? This is a good place to start so you at least know what your currently using resource wise. But of course you've mentioned that you will be adding like 6 more Linux servers, do you know there needs?
Where is your Avaya system running today? how about just virtualizing it on the hardware you already have on top of ESXi free? Then use an agent based backup solution to back it up. This reduces your costs on this one issue while allowing you freedom to use other solutions for the rest.
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@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:
We have equipment in 5 NA locations and over 500 phones, so management is not looking to move to anything else at this time.
Why would management be involved? IT should be like "we can save money, improve systems" and that's the end of it. Why would management have any say other than verifying cost savings and such? The bigger the network, the more money there is to be saved, right?
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:
We have equipment in 5 NA locations and over 500 phones, so management is not looking to move to anything else at this time.
Why would management be involved? IT should be like "we can save money, improve systems" and that's the end of it. Why would management have any say other than verifying cost savings and such? The bigger the network, the more money there is to be saved, right?
He's in the same situation as me. The hardware is already in place. Moving to FreePBX would likely require purchasing all new phones, or moving users to softphones on their computers, which would require purchasing headsets most likely.
In either case, there would be a substantial hardware outlay likely if they changed.
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@dashrender said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:
We have equipment in 5 NA locations and over 500 phones, so management is not looking to move to anything else at this time.
Why would management be involved? IT should be like "we can save money, improve systems" and that's the end of it. Why would management have any say other than verifying cost savings and such? The bigger the network, the more money there is to be saved, right?
He's in the same situation as me. The hardware is already in place. Moving to FreePBX would likely require purchasing all new phones, or moving users to softphones on their computers, which would require purchasing headsets most likely.
In either case, there would be a substantial hardware outlay likely if they changed.
But they are looking at significant outlay to keep using what they have. They have to invest specifically in a VMware solution instead of what meets the needs of the business, they have to pay to keep the Avaya running and they have to take on the risks of using a solution from a non-viable or marginally viable vendor. That's all real costs that they are facing to NOT switch.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@dashrender said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:
We have equipment in 5 NA locations and over 500 phones, so management is not looking to move to anything else at this time.
Why would management be involved? IT should be like "we can save money, improve systems" and that's the end of it. Why would management have any say other than verifying cost savings and such? The bigger the network, the more money there is to be saved, right?
He's in the same situation as me. The hardware is already in place. Moving to FreePBX would likely require purchasing all new phones, or moving users to softphones on their computers, which would require purchasing headsets most likely.
In either case, there would be a substantial hardware outlay likely if they changed.
But they are looking at significant outlay to keep using what they have. They have to invest specifically in a VMware solution instead of what meets the needs of the business, they have to pay to keep the Avaya running and they have to take on the risks of using a solution from a non-viable or marginally viable vendor. That's all real costs that they are facing to NOT switch.
I'm not saying you're wrong - but 500 phones, even Yealink aren't cheap, not to mention the training to the staff, the IT time, etc.
If it really boils down to it, they can just leave it on the server it's currently on, and change nothing else about that one server. We assume there is already a backup solution in place - so that shouldn't be that bad to maintain.
Then the business can plan for this change over down the road.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@john-nicholson said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@john-nicholson said in Looking for virtualization advice:
Knowing list is honestly useless when you don't know what discounts will apply in a quarter, or for what products. A lot of vendors have a small handful products every quarter that get an extra 30% off "power play". If you get a quote that's good for the quarter but don't keep in touch with the VAR you might miss the discount (not that you need to buy things you don't need, but it may throw off your budgeting). This is why you gota talk to your VARs!
I don't agree. Because all vendors do this. So knowing list really does give you 90% of what you need. And if a vendor throws away business because they do stupid public pricing is their own loss. Most vendors know not to do that, this is basic IT. So while knowing list doesn't tell you what you will pay, it does give you reasonable basis for comparison because everyone will have a sale quarterly that you can account for.
There are vendors where discount off list is normally 10%, there are ones where it's normally 70% (Meraki, from a MSP who does a lot of volumes). Often those standard discount rates can vary between product lines for the same vendor, especially if they are not fully integrated into the same partner network.
True, but Meraki is a product you'd never use anyway. Of actual quality products and vendors, do you ever see this happening?
For wireless? Airnet (Best AP's for hostile, CleanAir's patents for this stuff are amazing in weird industrial environments), Ruckus, Aruba (The standard in conference centers for unmatched density) all have deal registration with heavy discount schedules (at least 50%). Wireless is notorious for it because even small companies can end up buying quite a few if they have remote offices, or warehouses needing coverage. A small older Hotel with walls that are RF dense can end up with some crazy dense on AP's also. Ubiquity networks is pretty much alone in doing retail style pricing, and while I love them (have the monster AC-PRO in my house) they lack quite a few enterprise features that will need to be kludged in with other systems or made up for in over-deployment of units.
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@dashrender said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@dashrender said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:
We have equipment in 5 NA locations and over 500 phones, so management is not looking to move to anything else at this time.
Why would management be involved? IT should be like "we can save money, improve systems" and that's the end of it. Why would management have any say other than verifying cost savings and such? The bigger the network, the more money there is to be saved, right?
He's in the same situation as me. The hardware is already in place. Moving to FreePBX would likely require purchasing all new phones, or moving users to softphones on their computers, which would require purchasing headsets most likely.
In either case, there would be a substantial hardware outlay likely if they changed.
But they are looking at significant outlay to keep using what they have. They have to invest specifically in a VMware solution instead of what meets the needs of the business, they have to pay to keep the Avaya running and they have to take on the risks of using a solution from a non-viable or marginally viable vendor. That's all real costs that they are facing to NOT switch.
I'm not saying you're wrong - but 500 phones, even Yealink aren't cheap, not to mention the training to the staff, the IT time, etc.
If it really boils down to it, they can just leave it on the server it's currently on, and change nothing else about that one server. We assume there is already a backup solution in place - so that shouldn't be that bad to maintain.
Then the business can plan for this change over down the road.
Consulting across mid-market and enterprise really exposed to me how much money it is to replace some systems no matter how old and shitty they are just not being worth the capital. I was helping one customer with Millienium PBX"s (yes that ancient) that were 20 years out of service. Did they need to upgrade? Sure. Did they have over 10K phones they would need to replace when they moved to a new system. yup. Sadly this system was designed with 100% American military spec capacitors and DSP's and was used on coast guard ships so it was hardened to hell and back against the elements so it wouldn't die.
Did it support VOIP trunks? No. Did we cludge in VOIP to PRI Adtrans to make up for this? Yup!
40-50K for a new VMware HA cluster vs. Millions for some nicer features, but a huge balance sheet hit for the quarter that will spook investors on the ROIC ratio? Thanks but no thanks.
add in risks of outages, disruption on retraining staff and that 40-50K to kick that can down the road looks REALLY damn atractive.
Remember why people ran AS400's and mainframes forever? Beacuse migrations were trivial and the incremital trade in cost was often low. IBM kept the "total value" vs. a full code re-write always SLIGHTLY better looking in the short to middle term and that's all most people care about.
