What does EOL mean in practice

[CGEYROTH]

Some of our kit is coming to EOL and our client is asking the question what does this really mean? I'm thinking about server and storage hardware, we have some L-Class servers, n-class, fc60/sc10, autoraid 12H. Most of which is due for EOL in 2007/08/09.

when this happens what will be the impact? second hard drives, controllers and what about patches, support from HP?

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi,
I suppose End of life (for support...)


All the best
Victor

[Pete Randall]

The impact will be that HP will no longer support the hardware: no maintenance, no patches, no firmware upgrades. You would need to look to third parties for support or look into used equipment for spares.


Pete

[Victor Fridyev]

Hi,

In addition to previous Pete's message, according to my experience, the HW after EOL might be supported by HP, including replacing of all parts, but the price can be high, e.g. yearly support payment for G50 is about $3-4k

HTH

[Peter Godron]

Explain it to your client this way: EOL means you have an old car, for which you can get parts/maintenance etc., but at a higher than new price. You will not get the best performance out of it and more and more things will start going wrong. But unlike classic car, the value does not go up. ;-)

We have already experienced problems gettting spares for the 12H. This is always a trade-off between cost and risk.

[Steve Lewis]

If you look at the annual maintenance being paid for the old kit, you would probably be able to justify the cost of a new server and storage to replace it, maybe at less cost than future years support, especially if you purchase support up front.

I would suggest you get hold of the spec of a replacement system at similar price, then go find an accountant who can help you justify the purchase.

I found that I could replace an old K360 with 32Gb of SCSI storage with a new rp3400 which has about 10 times the cpu power and faster disks, for total cost less than 4 years support of the old system.

[Pete Randall]

Steve makes an excellent point. This is usually how I justify purchasing a new server. If you purchase the 3 year extended support up front you can simply calculate the savings of not having to pay support for 3 years against the cost of the new server. Using this method I was able to convince management to buy $250,000 of new server/disk for a net cost of just over $100,000.


Pete

[Geoff Wild]

This from our account rep:

HP sets Minimum Support Dates (MSD) early in the products life cycle.
These dates could be extended or could become the End Of Support dates (EOS) for this product.
The MSD is reviewed about 18 months ahead of this date and then becomes the EOS or is extended based on several criteria, one being expected parts availability. The dates listed below that are more than 18 months away are tentative EOS, but they should provide you with some form of target to work with.

L1000, A5576B: Jan 31, 2008

L2000, A5191A: extended to Dec 31, 2012

L3000, A6144B: currently set to May 31, 2011

L3000, A7117A: Oct 31, 2010

N4000, A3639A: extended to Dec 31, 2009

N4000, A3639B: extended to Dec 31, 2009

HP server support matrix:

http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/public_hp-ux_systems_support.pdf
[Moderator edit: The above link is no longer valid]

Rgds...Geoff