Re: US DOI Hardware

On Aug 30, 7:59 am, gunfigh..._at_gmail.com wrote:
> Seems like a possible waste of taxpayer dollars, but the US Department
> of Interior just pulled the plug on $20M plus of brand new storage
> equipment and blade servers. You can read the press release here:
>
> http://www.prweb.com/releases/egenera/blade-servers/prweb550135.htm
>
> Looks like a ton of storage gear and blade servers. Does anyone have
> any experience with the pros/cons/legalities of procuring support for
> hardware coming out of botched GSA purchases like this?

Caveat: I haven't dealt with this stuff since before ebay existed, so may be out of date or entirely wrong.

In general, gummint stuff that is surplused is offered to other gummint agencies first. In some cases, they may have to pay or use accounting gimmicks to deal with it. When no one else wants it, it is offered to the public in one of several ways. One way is closed-bid auction, where people submit written bids and the highest one wins. I went to one of those once because I saw they were offering an obscure unix system of the type that I happened to be working on, I think I bid $120 and the winner bid $125 (for pallets of multiple computers and storage devices, I don't know how I would have moved it had I won). It was mostly fire-licked Forest Service trucks, junkyard dealers were bidding those up to the stratosphere. Another way is ebay. My guess is that any support will be at the pleasure of the original manufacturers, who will likely make you pay, perhaps for preventive maintenance. And you don't know who threw it on the truck and how hard.

jg

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