@scottalanmiller said:

But what you can know is that almost no SAN vendor makes a server on par with a Proliant.

IIRC some HP SANs are or were Proliants. I recall the HP 4300 was basically a Proliant. When we were looking at getting a pair, we were basically told our existing Proliant was at risk of failure and in order to mitigate this risk we needed to effectively replace it with two Proliants, plus some software to keep the two in sync. It's adding redundancy to something that I've never personally had fail.

But like the majority of SMEs, we have no redundancy at the software level. We're running single databases for our ERP system and for our Exchange system, for example. So if the database fails we're down. Having a SAN would just mean the failure occurs across two pieces of hardware instead of one.

Another point to make about redundancy. I am really, really confident about the ability of my Proliants to handle disk failure. I've had quite a few over the years, and am now pretty relaxed about the process. That little red light comes on, I phone HP, a new drive arrives, I pop out the old drive, I pop in the new drive, the lights flash, and I walk away. Completely confident that the array will rebuild. It still makes me nervous, but it's a controlled nervousness. I doubt having a SAN fail is anywhere near as straightforward. My point being that I like simple redundancy, I dislike complex redundancy.

Anyway....anecdotally I've been responsible for servers for 3 SMEs over the last 15 years. In that time I've probably got through around 15 Proliant servers. The total downtime during that time is precisely zero. I've also got through hundreds of HP desktops and can count the number of failures on one-hand. So my anecdotal experience is that hardware is incredibly reliable. The only things that generally fail are power supplies and hard drives - but this hasn't resulted in server downtime as these two items have redundancy. I've even run mission critical server software on old re-allocated PCs, which isn't the wisest thing to do, but again, has given me relatively little trouble.

So without any reliable statistics to tell me otherwise, I can only rely on own experience which is that Proliant downtime isn't a big problem for me. I couldn't justify the cost of buying two SANs purely to address a risk that I'd never personally experienced, even if that risk was real.

My personal experience is that software is far, far less reliable than hardware, so my tight budget tends to address making software more reliable and not hardware. I'd be interested to know how many people spend thousands on a SAN but then fail to patch their software in a timely manner. I bet it happens and it's crazy because patching is generally free and SANs are expensive.

If anyone has stats to disprove my theory then I'd love to see them!

@scottalanmiller said:

But prostitution is a legitimate job option. Slavery is not. They still have problems but do they have as many?

Probably not. My point is legalisation only alleviates the problem, it doesn't solve it.

How much does a degree at an average US uni cost?

This was how it was supposed to be in the UK, with top universities charging more than bottom universities. But the plan failed and pretty much every university charges the maximum fee of £9k per year. So a degree from Oxford or Cambridge costs exactly the same as a degree from Northampton. All paid for upfront by the government and reclaimed in later years through income tax. It's a failed concept. I'm hoping my kids go to Uni abroad.

Windows 7. I've nothing particularly against Windows 8.1, but I don't see what if offers over 7, other than faster boot time. And pretty much everyone is familiar with the Windows 7 interface, which isn't that much different from XP. I'd rather not make users go through the learning curve of Windows 8 unless I have to. And HP PCs still come pre-installed with 7, so it's convenient to leave it as is rather than re-installing 8.1.

Office, definitely 2010. I can't stand 2013.

@Bill-Kindle said:

I love the free market and believe it can uplift even the poorest economies, but their governments have to also ensure that their own people aren't getting the short end of the stick too. It's corruption that makes free market globalization a bad phrase.

I love free markets as well. But we don't have free markets. Western governments must take some share of the blame. For example, US farm subsidies end up hurting 3rd world farmers who can't compete as the market is rigged not free.

@scottalanmiller said:

Yes. It's interesting. If you don't make drugs illegal you make it possible to regulate and protect people. If you don't make prostitution illegal you eliminate pimps and slavery almost completely. It's problems with the law that great these ecosystems.

If only it were that simple but prostitution is legal in Holland but they still have big problems with sex trafficking.

Taken to its logical extreme, would you legalise slavery in order to regulate and protect slaves?

There's no easy fix.

When I first considered buying a couple of SANs, on the advice of my vendor, I tried to find out some stats for Proliant reliability. But I couldn't find any. Do HP publish them? I asked around and no-one seemed to know. So I couldn't rely on stats even if I wanted to.

I love stats. I mean really, really love them. But getting hold of accurate ones is pretty tricky. So I rely on anecdotal evidence mostly, not through choice but through necessity.

I'm talking here about independent stats. I'm constantly bombarded with stats from vendors trying to sell me something. But in the same way @scottalanmiller would say never rely on the advice of a vendor, I'd say never rely on the stats of a vendor.

"The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say 'no' to almost everything"
Warren Buffet

"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the 100 other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the many things we haven’t done as the things we have done."
Steve Jobs

"Suppose you woke up tomorrow and received two phone calls. The first phone call tells you that you have inherited $20 million, no strings attached. The second tells you that you have an incurable and terminal disease, and you have no more than 10 years to live. What would you do differently, and, in particular, what would you stop doing?"
Jim Collins

"Time is the one great leveler. Everyone has the same amount to spend every day. The next time you feel that you ‘haven’t the time’ to do what you really want to do, it may be worth-while for you to remember that you have as much time as anyone else — twenty-four hours a day. How you spend that twenty-four hours is really up to you."
William J. Reilly

Writing a Powerpoint presentation to persuade my boss to buy Microsoft Dynamics NAV. About to give up and watch Holland v Argentina.

There'll be a catch, I'm sure. Otherwise, you'd be annoyed if you'd just signed up for Enterprise.

I presume the difference is that you can't mix plans, same as the difference between Midsize and Enterprise. So you can't have just Exchange users within your plan, for example, like you can by having some users on E1 some on E3.

I thought you could upgrade to Enterprise from other plans now though, but they're saying that's a new feature?

Great. I've only just got my head round the old plans.

It sounds like they've listened to my complaints on MangoLassi and made the changes I recommended though, so that's good.

I was planning on signing up to Small Business for my personal use this weekend, just to get the 1TB of storage. Will that still be offered on Business Essentials?

@scottalanmiller said:

Don't you see how weird that sounds?

I'm weird for buying Netgear or Meraki products.
I'm weird for getting an IT company to quote for the supply and fit of the whole solution.
I'm weird for not getting our electrician (who I don't even know) to do the work instead.

Fine. I'm weird. Whatever.

@scottalanmiller said:

Your electrician won't do basic electrical work? Why do you use him? In the US you'd be in a legal mess using a VAR instead of an electrician for building electrical wiring.

Why do you assume my VAR isn't qualified to do the work or doesn't have subcontractors to do any parts they aren't qualified to do? I don't call mounting APs and installing patch cables and panels in server room racks etc etc 'basic electrical work', but I'll ask him if he does much of that kind of work. I didn't know that all electricians were familiar with ethernet cables, but I'd never really thought about it before.

But honestly, I only wanted some advice on specifying a Meraki system. Instead I'm being told to sack my electrician.

Some of our field service engineers use Netbooks. I've always quite liked them. They use them to connect to our hardware on customer sites to run diagnostics software. I'm wondering about replacing them with Surface Pros.

I have two concerns.

One is robustness. Netbooks were pretty robust and dirt cheap to replace if they did break. But we could put the Surfaces (or should that be Surfi?) in rugged cases.

Second is using them in confined spaces. It's pretty easy to find somewhere flatish to place a Netbook and type on it.

Whatdya think?

I have a builder and an electrician,, but neither will lay Cat5 cables. Especially 1oo feet in the air along steel girders. And they wouldn't know exactly where the best place to install them is, and neither do I. And they'd charge almost as much as the VAR anyway. I don't see the point just to save a few hundred dollars. It's false economy.

Attaching them to the ceiling, cabling etc etc. I can handle most things software, but stay clear of hardware.

@scottalanmiller said:

Although even here I've never seen them through a VAR.

This is the problem. For a small SME it is very difficult to buy hardware that isn't from a VAR because you need someone to install the kit. I've done it plenty of times, partly because I'm a control freak and partly to save money, but it's not easy - you get the hardware from X and get the install from Y. If you're not careful, it can result in everyone being unsatisfied. It's great when it works out and a nightmare when it goes wrong.