http://www.fragmentationneeded.net/2013/03/what-did-west-virginia-officials-buy.html
This kind of wasteful spending is just crazy. While I can understand the desire to standardize the equipment across locations, this only works if there is a small delta between requirements. You simply don’t put in a piece of gear designed for 500 users in a location that has only 5.
In my day to day work, we generally use the same chassis (Cisco 4510’s) in larger locations of 200 or more users, and then change the number of switch blades and supervisors based on needs. If the location is small (under 30 users) then a single switch can go in for a tiny percentage of the cost of a large location’s equipment. For us, using the larger chassis instead of a small 4507 makes sense because the price difference isn’t very large, and the chassis can be relocated and expanded (blade wise) without hitting a limit that we could have easily avoided (those three slots add capability for another 144 users). Note that clearly I’m not going into details about redundancy or the other million pieces of gear we need in order to run our business!
I wonder if the person that approved even thinks about where the money to pay for this gear comes from? In my case, I know exactly where it comes from and how hard my coworkers have to work to bring in the revenue. In WV’s case, do they even think about how many taxpayers had to “contribute” large portions of their income to buy this unneeded gear?
Havana does not approve…
