HP's Factory Express
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Part of my HP Houston campus tour in early October included their Factory Express custom configuration and assembly center. If you want your HP server and storage unit order to come installed and tested in a rack, rather than in 212 boxes, you will love Factory Express.
Filling a factory floor space that seemed large enough to play four football games at one time, including room for the bands and cheerleaders and some stands, HP has more room for configurations than any potential customer. That's exactly what HP offers -- room and support for a custom configuration.
Design engineers work with customers to decide how to place ordered products efficiently in racks. Drawings appear on computer screens in the installation area, along with instructions for the assembly techs. My favorite part? If an engineer messes up, such as specifying a three foot cable to connect devices four feet apart, the assembly techs can march to the engineer's office overlooking the assembly area, drag the engineer down to the floor, and "politely" point out the engineer's mistake. How does that sound for engineering design accountability? Better yet, how does this compare to the last system you configured, when a mis-ordered cable took a day or a week to put right?
The largest order I saw was 15 racks full of servers and storage being prepared for a Mexican university weather research department. A year ago, Factory Express put together 75 racks with over 1,700 servers for an unnamed customer. It required four full truck trailers to deliver the system. They can handle your system, they promise. HP often recreates the customer's data center floor plan on their assembly floor, so there are no surprises when the systems arrive. Customers often send their own techs to test the configurations, load special software, and verify the system before spending a dollar in shipping charges.
Blade servers arrive as barebones kits from overseas, then techs add the proper CPUs, memory, and disks. 1U and 2U servers arrive from their assembly point in the next building over. Racks are stuffed, configured, and wired so neatly it looks like surgeons routed the patch cables. I peered inside at least a dozen racks, and never saw a cable loose, unlabeled, or just "close enough" to work.
If you want a neat and organized system, Factory Express will configure it and deliver it to your door.
See part 1: Smaller, cooler blades
ITworld.com
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