October 2003

Check your N-Class server to preserve upgrade options

Even those sites that have made the jump to the N-Class HP 3000s might need to do some purchasing with what’s left of October, according to HP and its resellers. The supply of extra processors for these 3000s doesn’t fall off those HP price lists on Oct. 31, but some N-Class sites don’t have the right chassis to install the CPUs that HP continues to sell through October, 2004. Revision A and B chassis, used in the N-Class servers purchased before September 2002, won’t work with the CPUs HP is selling. An upgrade to the older chassis is available from HP, according to Alvina Nishimoto of the company’s Migration Center.

Nishimoto also said that customers who are using the company’s loaner program — where an HP 9000 sits alongside HP 3000s that are being migrated — will do best just to keep the HP 9000, rather than convert their HP 3000s to 9000s. HP offers a buy-out option for this migration loaner, which Nishimoto said is a better deal than converting an N-Class server to an HP 9000. “The remarketed N-Class is pretty much totally non-existent,” Nishimoto said at HP World. “It’s just too much of a value to turn it into an HP 9000.” While this message had an obvious punchline — buying a new N-Class was a good investment — it also spoke to the value of acquiring an HP 9000 in the current marketplace compared to the value of an HP 3000. Only one of those two systems is in limited supply as a new item, according to HP and its resellers.


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