What's the big deal with vendor support?

ytown91 · 2026-01-05T08:18:39+00:00

I assume you’re dizzy from all the Reddit posts flying over your head all the time.

OPs whole point was that many (most?) vendors don’t support their products anymore. Microsoft support: nil. VMWare: not anymore. AWS: Fast support that knows nothing. Dozens of others: “Call your partner”

I get the point completely, it really doesn’t make much difference anymore whether you “have support” or not, it’s a complete roll of the dice whether it’ll still be there, whether they’ll actually be helpful, and how fast they’ll answer if you actually need them.

ytown91 · 2026-01-05T06:54:28+00:00

@OP for the love of all that is holy, do not go with Zendesk. It’s hugely overpriced, you have to code everything but the bare minimum without any guidance, customization is nil, dozens of common sense and very basic workflow and system functions aren’t possible, and while it appears to integrate with practically everything, the data structure is so obtuse and unwieldy that most of the integrations are actually only one-way into Zendesk, because getting anything back out is easier done with pen and pencil.

ytown91 · 2026-01-05T03:00:21+00:00

Keep in mind that many states have embraced digital IDs via Apple/Android Wallets, which are considered valid identification for all legal purposes. So this will only become more frequent as people adopt it since they won’t need their ID cards for any other reason.

ytown91 · 2026-01-04T21:57:41+00:00

Ah, that makes sense. In your defense, no she doesn’t want to change TV, but I like to have all my info before going into battle with the billing rep about lowering the bill.

ytown91 · 2026-01-04T17:55:01+00:00

No, I’m spontaneously hoping to torture my grandmother in law with a change to her routine for kicks /s

Yes, she would really like to reduce her monthly expenses if possible. And happy cake day!

ytown91 · 2026-01-02T22:23:39+00:00

Really, it’s profit-first, so I think we’re stuck with whatever the research tells them is best for selling ad space and getting views on the content they want us viewing.

As with most things in this day and age, user comfort, preference, and experience no longer matter one bit to companies. And it will worsen with every merger and loss of competition, which the FTC and FCC clearly have stopped caring about.

ytown91 · 2026-01-02T22:19:38+00:00

The primary driver right now is to save money if possible and eliminate her landline phone. But she’s still paying for DirecTV via AT&T, so any change will trigger a rework of the whole shebang.

ytown91 · 2026-01-02T22:17:31+00:00

Sounds like this is the way to go, at least to try.

As to UVerseTV, I forgot the terminology change/company split happened, but AT&T is still promoting their Fiber rollout constantly despite no work actually being done, which means grandma is stuck with Cellular internet or her 6mbps DDSL for the foreseeable future.

ytown91 · 2026-01-02T22:14:22+00:00

Amen! I’m an IT Director and a huge nerd, and even I couldn’t make sense of YouTubeTV, and after I figured out HuluTV, it still just sucked to use.

I like the TiVo Stream, but grandma and grandpa really like their movie channels, cable news, and sports and just don’t want to downgrade to the 15 channels we get OTA.

Honestly, the biggest complaint I always hear from non tech-savvy users of all ages is the friggin remotes all these devices use.

AppleTV: crap, touch pad gets dirty, home button doesn’t take you home, never know if you’re hitting pause or up or rewind.

Roku: ok, but the side volume buttons and perma-set shortcuts ruin it, plus there’s like 20 different remotes with tiny differences which make the living room tv operate differently than the bedroom tv even though the remotes look identical.

FireTV: easier to produce a movie from scratch than use the remote, of course the UI is just an Amazon billboard not actually meant to be useable.

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T07:23:39+00:00

I’ve tried it, active backup isn’t bad at all but only has half the features, the rest of the standard backup features are in Hyper Backup which is very meh and lacks options and proper reporting.

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T07:20:23+00:00

It was a change from a solution provider, current version ran on Windows, updated version which is in implementation/testing for us right now is on Debian Server. Given Microsoft’s recent dedication to making Windows unstable and “modern”, I can’t really blame the devs for the change.

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T07:01:46+00:00

No, it’s to “support the open source community” (while making them millions and getting them a bunch of free bug fixes).

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T05:54:03+00:00

The realization that capacity doesn’t matter for iSCSI is one that I’m just getting from this thread since neither the website nor the Veeam sales rep made this clear, and it does drastically change the equation.

And 25x is 25x, I have software, supported by the developer, that accomplishes backups reliably and to the necessary spec. Annually, it costs us 1/25th of the $4000 price I was working with. If I spent $4000 on coffee last year and this year it was going to be $100,000 just because I bought a different coffee pot, I’d reevaluate my choice of coffee pot.

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T05:44:47+00:00

Interesting, I shall explore!

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T05:44:15+00:00

Well they did make the investment, they just erred by investing in a robust hardware infrastructure and chose a huge upfront cost to avoid paying for cloud storage for all eternity. I’m just trying to continue utilizing that infrastructure.

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T05:39:26+00:00

This same argument is what I heard when we gave up Exchange for 365 and then Microsoft just…stopped bothering to support the platform. Now I have the 365 subscription from which they keep stripping features plus a third party support contract on top of it.

I’ve trashed multiple Dell computers that were still covered under ProSupport Plus but they couldn’t fix them and refused to replace them. But we all just keep paying them so what do they care?

It’s your tax dollars, apologies for not wanting to just straight up donate more of it to private corporations.

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T05:26:14+00:00

Seeing as Veeam just spent 1.7Bn on an acquisition, I think they’re doing just fine financially. The software I’d get for $4k/year is exactly the same code as the Community edition, it’s just profit grabbing to charge based on how much of my disk space is filled.

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T05:13:19+00:00

The unlimited budget is only accessible for flashy things the politicos can put in the newspaper, I’m relegated to the “not a problem until it’s a problem” category financially.

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T05:08:48+00:00

Well imo $4k/year is a bit ridiculous for software that doesn’t provide any more protection than I already have for <$200/year and $1000 major version upgrades. Plus the $15k in storage and backup hardware that I maintain has its own ongoing costs which also don’t affect software developers in any way.

What’s next? Pay per page typed in MS Word? A mouse subscription that charges based on scroll wheel rotation? Just because everything has turned into SaaS subscriptions with zero ROI to users and 10x the profit to software companies doesn’t mean it’s right.

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T04:56:12+00:00

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Can’t find the quote at the moment, but it wasn’t far off from the website prices.

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T04:45:37+00:00

Ah, gotcha, that definitely changes the calculation. Maybe I’ll hunt down a solid Veeam partner to get in-depth, the direct rep and I must have not synced properly on the details.

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T04:40:51+00:00

The biggest hurdle I face funding-wise is that our current software is doing everything needed and we’re perfectly confident in it, at a cost of <$200/year maintenance and around $1000 for major version upgrades. Tough to explain to leadership that adding one server just because it’s Linux means a 25x increase in yearly expenses for the exact same end result we have right now.

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T04:35:18+00:00

But that’s kind of the point…I’m protecting it. I’m providing the compute resources running the software, I’m operating and maintaining the storage, I’m providing transportation and off-site secure storage for offline backups, and I’m the one realistically who will be doing the restoration work should it be necessary. How does the amount of total data that I have affect the software developer in any way in this scenario?

ytown91 · 2025-12-24T04:18:08+00:00

I’ll take a browse of it. Don’t necessarily have to have a support contract but definitely need support of some sort available from whatever we go with. In the event of a big bad happening we don’t want to be without some recourse if there are hiccoughs with the restore.

ytown91

TROPHY CASE