I've got a small number of users for the number of servers I manage. Right now, there's around 15 users in the company, and nearly all of them have laptops. We currently run an astonishing array of different models, each bought sometime in the previous four years. Because of this, no two are alike, and support is a nightmare.
I want to switch from the process we have in place now to a lease based plan, where my users are upgraded in "flights", so to speak. The benefits will be tremendous. I'll be able to roll out a standard image instead of wondering who has what version of what software, issues will be much easier to debug, and I can conduct thorough tests before rollout.
My problem is that I've never done leases nor planned rollouts like this. What advice would you give to someone who is just doing this for the first time?
See the related question on serverfault, as well!
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
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11 comments:
You've got a lot of great comments over at serverfault, most of which I agree with.
1) Lease vs Buy is for Finance to decide.
2) Lease vs Buy doesn't really effect 'timing'.
3) Support I would tie to # of users/systems, not so directly to variety. What you end up with is more of the same issues, instead of the same number of different issues. But still easier to support from a consistency & training standpoint.
4) I've done this for years and it works great. We'll do batches of 15-25 systems each year from standard images. The setup time savings are awesome. The biggest challenges are migrating user settings and data.
We use Novell Zenworks at my company. http://www.novell.com/products/zenworks/configurationmanagement/
It manages each piece of software or MS update an Application object, and when your users connect to the company network and login, ZenWorks scans the configuration database for the PC and sends down any updates and/or gives access to new or updated applications. I've been using it and it's predessor Intel LANdesk since 1995. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell_ZENworks
-Darin @unixgod
@Jeff
Thanks. I can't see how some people say having active image management doesn't save time. It would save me loads in terms of troubleshooting.
@Darin
I've heard of Zenworks, but never used it. It does sound interesting. Any issues with things like laptops, where the user isn't always connected to the corporate network?
As Jeff has said, leasing vs buying may not fit, it’s defiantly up to your finance controllers as to which fits best with the company.
First thing to do is pick your brand, then investigate the supply chain i.e. do you purchase direct or through a reseller.
Those two will dictate how you are supported (I've found resellers can be a bit sluggish with returns when compared to dealing direct with the OEM).
Once you are happy with the supplier/brand, pick the model/s you will be buying. Setting a standard from the start will help with the imaging side as well as future changes to the product line up.
Once you have a spec, make sure those who do the purchasing stick to it. Using something like Dell's Premier Pages (or another brand alternative) is really good for this.
Once you have the hardware side sorted, I've found WDS to be by far the easiest thing to use to deploy images. I'd strongly advise avoiding third party deployment software, it’s normally expensive and clunky. If you do it right, MS can provide a seamless system.
Drop me a mail if you want any more information, I've been dealing with large imaging systems for many years :)
Thanks
Chris
@Chris
That all sounds like great advice! I really appreciate you sharing that. Since I have literally no background in this, it's very useful to hear about it from people who have been there.
I'm always interested in knowing more about...well, everything, really, but I don't have your email. If you would, drop me a line at standalone.sysadmin@gmail.com. Thanks again!
From my years consulting (and that's been a while ago), the lease option was advantageous for some of my customers. The catch to these leases, I found, is in the termination. Almost all of our leases for machines required some sort of action to terminate the lease, else they auto-renewed for an additional year (translation - a year of wasted payments for old machines). So make sure to note your lease termination dates, make sure to notify the leasing company by certified mail at termination and generally there is a buy-out option negotiated up-front for the hardware at the end of lease. My customers never seemed to return the hardware, though some do. Its been a long time, so not sure what could have changed in the past few years, but if you go this road, maybe you can avoid this gotcha.
Past that gotcha, the lease option was straight forward. We worked with both Gateway and Dell at the time and once quoted, you'd be presented with the lease paperwork. It'd break down the transaction into monthly payments with all the terms and conditions spelled out. Read that document closely. After executed, you pay the monthly fees and you have computers - fairly simple.
As for rollout, an imaging solution would be almost a necessity, but something you can script is awesome. I've used Altiris and they have an awesome solution for prepping the system, installing the OS, software, scripting all the installation. Microsoft has something similiar, but not sure many details on it. Our company also uses Symantec Ghost for imaging some boxes.
I don't think your issue is lease vs. buy, but rather people buying whatever they want without a view towards support.
Pick one manufacturer that has a decent range of models, and stick with them. The (large-ish) software corporation I work for has standardized on Lenovo ThinkPad laptops and they're generally pretty good. The default model is in the T-series, but for pure road warriors that need light-weight, they can pick up an X-series. (We use HP for workstations and x84 servers.)
We lease but I think that's an independent decision than trying to reduce model support issues.
I'm sure Dell and HP have good models, but using Lenovo as an example: if you pick the W500 and the X300 you'll have a choice for people who want power and those that want portability.
Run the numbers and see whether it's better to lease or buy, but do that independently. You need to get buy-in from The Top so that people can't go off on their own to do their own thing. This needs to be a Decree, otherwise you'll get people moaning about wanting Manufacturer X because their computer-savvy nephew said they were better.
Having just completed a software standardization project on 6 different models of PC's, I can feel your pain.
Your finance department is going to look at leases as a cost center, not capital. If you understand this, and can convince the Controller that moving to leased equipment will cost less to support, it will make the transistion much, much easier.
We had to audit software and hardware by sneakernet... not the most efficient path.
I have been testing Auditing software, and if you have some spare cycles on a linux/apache box, try OpenAudit http://open-audit.org). It is easy to set up, and it give a wealth of information about what is deployed on the PC. it does require a script to be run on each Windows PC to enable the audit process, but well worth the trouble to me.
Matt,
I've worked in both a fully-leased environment and a purchase PCs as an asset environment. They both have their advantages and disadvantages.
For PCs, laptops and network gear, purchasing is definitely the way to go. A purchase with a 4 or 5 year accidental damage warranty will probably cost the same as a 3-year lease. It allows you to be more flexible in acquiring new hardware (important when the company expands), and you can re-purpose your older machines to a less demanding role.
Plus...switching out PCs every 2.5 years is a pain, even with a custom scripted solution.
For servers, I think leasing is the better bet, especially now that virtualization technology is becoming more mainstream. A lease allows you to keep current with technology, you don't have to worry about keeping around racks of old servers because accounting says they still have book value, and if you are a virtual environment, you can easily move to the new hardware with little downtime.
Storage is more complicated, and there are benefits to both ways...
Be very, very, careful with leasing. It can be a very useful and important purchasing tool, but it can also get you into a huge amount of trouble.
First things first, never lease anything without a (reasonable) buyout option unless you are 100% absolutely guaranteed positive you are not going to keep it. Also, make absolutely sure that you keep track of your lease agreements and know what is and isn't on lease, and when the leases end.
Especially for smaller companies, I'm a fan of leasing for large purchases ($100k for a new storage system, or $200k for a new Oracle RAC setup, or whatever). It can help you spread the purchase out over a couple of years, instead of taking a big hit all at once.
I'm generally not a big fan of leasing on smaller purchases. Leasing adds additional overhead in order to manage the leases and track the systems. If you screw up here, you can end up with missing or lost systems that you then have to pay for (possibly at a premium) because you didn't own it, just leased it. And that's on top of the replacement cost you'll have to cover if you still need the device.
Part of the reason I'm really pushing this is that I worked at a company that started with leasing a few things. Then some absolutely morons in the finance department decided to lease everything. Without making that clear to the rest of the company.
By the time we figured out what was going on, we had devices that we'd paid for 2-3 times over (because we'd been leasing them for 5 years when they were purchased on a lease that covered their value in 18-24 months). Worse, the leases we'd gotten suckered into (again, complete morons in the finance department) had no buyout option. We had to rip out and return basically everything we'd purchased in the past few years unless we wanted to keep paying for it forever. And remember what I said about keeping track of everything? Hah! Right. It took roughly two full time employees six months to get a reasonable handle on where we were, with a huge effort to fully catalog and organize everything.
Oh, and also be *very* careful with leasing and software. You can really screw yourself over if you lease software (if purchased bundled with the hardware or via a third party leasing agent). You might have planned on upgrading your Exchange servers and keeping the same Exchange licenses, but if you bought them bundled with your Dell servers on a lease, and are returning your servers, those Exchange licenses are probably going to have to go back, too (also illustrating the importance of a buyout option again).
Leasing can be very useful. Just remember: Buyer beware, and make sure you know what you're doing. Remember that when you lease, you don't actually own the hardware, so keep track of it. Make sure you have a buyout.
Good luck. ;-)
@Christopher
Wow, that's a tale of woe! Thanks for sharing that. It really does make me pause.
To be honest, since I posted this, we've looked into some of the pricing of leases and they haven't been competitive against buying. In the end, it's going to come down to capital. Do we have the money to buy a flight of laptops or not.
Since we're only considering laptops, I don't think losing the equipment would be a problem.
Anyway, thanks very much for sharing your experience. It's definitely weighing on my mind.
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