Stick with these warranty rules and your firm will never lose on a PC or server hardware investment.
Bottom-line, all servers should be purchased with a 3yr warranty and when the warranty is up Rekall always purchases an extended warranty for 2 more years. The average life of a server is 5 – 7 years. Once your at that 5yr point you should re-evaluate your firm needs, maybe you want to go to the cloud, maybe the server is slow and it’s time for a new one. Keep in mind that maintenance performed on that server as a whole will occur mostly between year 5 and 7, do you want to deal with that downtime? This is always the clients decision with the help of IT.
Workstations on the other hand are disposable. Buy a workstation with a 3yr warranty but don’t waste your time purchasing an extended warranty. If the PC dies, just buy a new one. The money you’ll spend in hardware and labor fixing a desktop is usually a large portion of a brand new PC, cost wise. If your IT company offers unlimited support, perhaps it is worth fixing a desktop due to the fact that labor is not a cost factor. In these situations we generally give our clients all the cost information and help them make the best business / financial decision.
