on 10:37 Wed 09 Mar, Lamar Owen (lowen at pari.edu) wrote: > On Wednesday, March 09, 2011 10:16:34 am Brunner, Brian T. wrote: > > This would be far cheaper than the time spent troubleshooting the > > running (sometimes hanging) system. > > Let me interject here, that from a budgeting standpoint 'cheaper' has > to be interpreted in the context of which budget the costs are coming > out of. New hardware is capex, and thus would come out of the capital > budget, and admin time is opex, and thus would come out of the > operating budget. There may be sufficient funds in the operating > budget to pay an admin $x,000 but the funds in the capital budget may > be insufficient to buy a server costing $y,000, where y=x. That represents an accounting failure, as opex is now subsidizing capex. Troubleshooting of known bad equipment should be an opex chargeback against capex or some capital reserve. This requires clueful beancounters. Recent economic/business/finance history suggests a significant shortage of same. Cue supply/demand and incentives off-topic digression. The answer is still to communicate the issue upstream. Estimating replacement costs and likelihood will help in the relevant business / organizational decision. -- Dr. Ed Morbius, Chief Scientist / | Robot Wrangler / Staff Psychologist | When you seek unlimited power Krell Power Systems Unlimited | Go to Krell!