HPE Storage Users Group

"Mandatory" is a bit of a everyone wants to make a buck. We pushed back and did the hardware racking/cabling on our own with someone coming out to verify the cabling...saved some time/money. We purchased an array later and when the line-item was included we had it removed and did the install ourselves.

We did it pretty much like you did.

I did the racking and inserting of disks etc, the consultant did the loop cabling, configuration and helped me learn the zoning procedures (its been 5-6 years of iscsi, i kind of forgot how FC even worked )

We also used some of the alloted time to have some help with configurations for our Unbreakable Oracle installation and some VMware hints.

All in all a very nice process.

I installed one the other day without hp install services included, that's in the UK though.

So it's certainly possible, hp don't like it, but it's doable.

It's not all about making a buck, it's about making sure this very expensive product is set up correctly, as if it isn't then it could cause all sorts of issues down the line, and time customer will blame the product, and hp will have to support it etc.

Hp will make the money either way, every 3par is bidded, so if it comes through with install parts or not, hp will have already decided the margin on that deal and will reduce the overall cost by a percentage to bring it down to that amount, so whether the install parts are on there or not, hp will make the same money.

Like I said before, getting a San up and running is fairly easy, getting it set up right is another matter, there's many ways to have it configured, when youre buying a £150k product, paying £2k to make sure it's working as well as it was intended is a small price to pay, having it not working to it's full potential could cost thousands.......

100% agree and the possibility of having to reconfigure things, possibly disruptively or even downtime / data loss at a later date due to an initial misconfiguration makes the install / hand holding worth while, at least for the first unit.

One of the reasons HP try to mandate the install through HP or an authorized partner is a poor setup directly effects their field uptime figures for the platform and typically leads to call home not being setup correctly. It also ties up remote resource to support a non experienced user trying to install the system for the first time.

That remote resource ideally should be supporting break fix and remote diagnostics for existing customers, not troubleshooting inexperienced installation attempts.
So it's not all about making a buck. With installation costs being typically a trivial amount in the overall deal value, is it really worth the risk ?

It's really a commercial discussion, so if you need to push back and see if they can eek out a little more discount do so, request buy back on existing kit or offer yourself as a reference rather than forego the services.

The problem from my end is that the last two 3PAR I deployed, we did have issues, both were identified as an incorrectly setup unit (one cabling related, one firmware incorrectly updated), and both were actually done by HP's installation services.

In one of those cases, I opened an HP case (Proactive Care) and, after going nowhere, found the solution on this forum instead.

I'm 100% in favour of taking expert advise where it's available. I have a very strong opinion regarding paying for experts if I don't feel I'm getting it.

Given the complete change in architecture it can take a while to get the concepts and best practices around 3PAR (as highlighted daily on this site) so make sure you have the basics down pat before attempting any install. Also I'm not sure your experience invalidates the above advice. If anything it probably highlights how easy it is to get things wrong, especially on a relatively new platform. Many are happy doing things themselves, that is until it goes wrong at which point they assume they''ll suddenly become the most important call in the queue. Whereas the is reality you''ve entered a triage system, meaning for self install issues you're likely at the back of the said queue, sorry but that's just how it is.

Installation Services is definitely mandatory now (it changed around May 24th I believe). Disti and Watson can not build the .xml config without it. You can however request a FAN override, but you'd better have a pretty good reason for why, or a rather high up sponsor within HP's Storage Division to vouch for you. As a Gold HP Enterprise partner (who is delivery authorized), we just finished going through all this here in Canada to do a delivery ourselves outside of HP's Installation Services... And then when we had the issues with Gold PCMs (see my post from earlier this month), support did nothing by give me grief until they sent an HP tech (who was not install authorized) to double check my work (and I am install authorized).

dcc

It's certainly not mandatory in the UK, although recommended, as I said, I did one two weeks ago, and a week before that, then one next year planned, we are a preferred platinum partner with service one accreditation (install services for hp) and we always try and sell the hp services, but they are expensive, so if we are in a competitive situation then we sell our own services instead, doesn't make any difference to the customer as they still get the same engineer/consultant whether the hp part is sold or not, and they still fill out the same forms, and we can still call hp during the install to make sure phone home is working, and we have a vip mase phone number and pin code to get priority support during the install.

So in reality, the customer gets the same experience, well unless they take it on themselves, but that's a last resort, and invariably when still end up asking us in because they get stuck on something or want it health checked to make sure it's production ready.

My best advice is don't under estimate the importance and value of negotiation when it comes to HP-3PAR purchases. As a member of this public user group community, its not in anyone's interest to under size or otherwise cut corners on your 3PAR deployment.

I believe HP and the rest of the community would enjoy reading a story about your absolute successful deployment of your new 3PAR, which is nearly guaranteed to happen if the unit is right sized and deployed properly.

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Richard Siemers
The views and opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.