Let’s introduce Albus, a Divisional Finance Cost Controller.  Purely fictional and any resemblance to actual persons living then dead is purely coincidental, blah, blah.

Albus is very good at his job, and is very good at ignoring FUD, inflated TCO/ROI, and other stuff. 

Anyway, Albus has ‘put a hold‘ on purchasing a new host, VI3 license and extra SAN storage for our project.  He wanted to “crunch the numbers” and see if he could make white boxes more “economically viable” than our purchase requisition for a new host.

….Oh crap, this is going to be a loooong and nasty day.

Albus gets his barebone whiteboxes delivered for the special rate of $688 (Pre assembled with single SATA drive and CDROM).  He’s also divisional cost controller and doesn’t give a damn about:

  • Windows or Operating Systems, that comes from Corp and their EA
  • Racks, you can recycle the old comms shelves
  • Power, not his cost centre, recycle the existing power rails
  • Switches, since they are low end roles, recycle your low end switches and cables
  • Operational Costs, Comes out of the project opex
  • Our labour, we come out of Corp

So given we are getting ~22 VMs to a host @ a raw cost of about $1190, Albus reckons he can get ’computers‘ with KVMs @ a raw cost of ~$688.  …because he’s such a nice guy, he’ll throw in a junior contractor to install the baseline OS image — because our team is very busy.

So we gently ‘reminded‘ Albus, his expensive project team will be delayed over the upcoming month whilst his junior installs and configures 20 servers.  We’d love to help, but we’re very busy.  Predictably, Albus does care about deadlines, and making his division look good.  He said leave it with him to crunch the numbers.

Good news, the host was approved about an hour ago.  What a day! 

Anyway, this is a biased and unfair rant from my soapbox.  It shouldn’t be like this, but it is.  I should have built a bridge and move on, but I haven’t just yet.  I’ve won this battle, but have we won the war?  I’ve no idea, I’m not even going to think about it just yet.  For anyone else who has been through a similar exercise, I feel your pain!

But after today, I’m going to unwind, and take the bike home via Mt Cootha this afternoon.