HPE ProLiant Microserver Gen10 $175

[mmo]

damn, that's reall sux, i guess HPE just like Dell and will never ever ship any price mistake items.

 

[MiniKnight]

I just got a survey email from HPE.
They are conducting a small survey and asking how I found out about the product.
The answers are to drive better promotions towards the right public.

1. How long were you looking for this product before this Limited Availability Promotion?
2. How did you find out the Product’s price cut off?
3. Did you know HPE works with partners to fulfill these orders?

My hypothesis is that the price is legitimate and was a limited quantity promotion. HPE got way more responses than expected and are trying to figure out why. The promotion was likely targeted and other people cough STH cough found out.

Me thinks they don't want to cancel everyone's order. They want some people to take advantage of this. This is likely an intro to working with partners or getting people into their ecosystem. If these people have a bad experience then the promotion just backfired.

This is not a pricing mistake.

Prices for targeted groups are handled with a special discount code but I am sure that these codes make their way to the web quickly.

If I get that I'm putting I found out through STH.

If @Patrick was first, all of ours will get rejected too.

Not honoring a front page of HPE's store pricing and I'm going to pass on using Insight ever again. That's just shady. I checked other etailers and the X3216 Microserver is still a product they're selling.

 

[mmo]

i am not quite sure if they are using price error/mistake to get more DATA for whatever usage they want to. It just really bad that they didn't realize their mistake and still not fixing it. This is extremely bad and this kind of business should not be supported.

 

[svt3391]

Mine is cancelled.

This is the email.

Pleased to meet you digitally. I manage the orders through the HPE Marketplace where Insight fulfillment is selected. I am reaching out to let you know that we will have to unfortunately cancel this order. This item is no longer available as “new” and it is considered discontinued by HPE. We are going to get the item corrected on the website so that it no longer shows available from Insight.

Product SKU: 870208-001 HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 entry server with one AMD Opteron X3216 processor, 8 GB memory, 1 TB large form factor non-hot plug SATA drive, and a 200W power supply

You will be receiving a notification shortly that the ordered has been rejected. On behalf of HPE and Insight we appreciate your business and apologize for the inconvenience. I would like to offer you a complimentary consultation with Insight’s data center team to provide you with an adequate replacement option through HPE. Is this something you would be interested in?

Thank you,

 

[MiniKnight]

It's like the Insight guys don't realize that even the incremental discount on these is cheaper than the average customer acquisition cost.

It's leaving a bad taste for Insight and HPE now.

 

[techtoys]

The product is available from other partners but at $344.
This is not because it was discontinued. I think the Insight promotion backfired.
Maybe they got listed because of the price but intended it as "quantities limited at promotional price"

This type of bait and switch could be illegal under state laws.
That is what is sounds like in the email.

Pricing mistakes happen.
All you need to do is post or acknowledge that is was a mistake.
You don't need to say and should not say the product was discontinued.
If you follow it up with an offer for a higher priced alternative
... well ...
bait and switch is a simple idea.

 

[chilipepperz]

Yea, if they said the 1TB version wasn't available that's one thing. I'm now pissed because I bought drives and NICs that I'll have to pay return shipping and restocking fees for.

This will influence my next HPE purchase at work.

 

[Patrick]

Confirmed, the Opteron X3216 HPE Microserver has not been discontinued. Perhaps it was the SKU with the 1TB drive?

 

[WANg]

@WANg i'm not concerned really about the speed as much. I think of it more like an atom server.

For storage its fine. For extra cluster nodes its fine. I'm not expecting crazy performance. I'm expecting a cheap way to put drives online

Well, there is that small matter of getting Insight to honor the pricing and ship the damned things...

 

[WANg]

Confirmed, the Opteron X3216 HPE Microserver has not been discontinued. Perhaps it was the SKU with the 1TB drive?

I don't think it's discontinued. In fact, Insight themselves show the X3216+1GB model as being available at $732 (same SKU as before, except the pricing is different now), while the JBOD barebones version is $426.

BTW, if you look at the pricing on Insight, it's a bit of a shit-show. There are 2 X3421 JBOD models listed - one for $487 and the other at $614, and as far as I can tell, the pricing difference is just marketing jargon (Insight seems to fail spectacularly in explaining things). Eh, I wouldn't buy from them at all...

 

[Jeggs101]

This looks really bad for HPE that Insight would do this.

I mean how many did they sell from this thread and others that STH'ers spawned? Dozens? Instead of the community of early adopters and people working on cutting edge use cases with them, Insight is pissing off the community.

Its easy to see why Dell's growing faster than HPE if this is how HPE's most favored partners are doing things.

 

[Patrick]

The ProLiant team got back to me. The specific SKU was discontinued with the 1TB drive and ClearOS pre-installed.

 

[Evan]

The ProLiant team got back to me. The specific SKU was discontinued with the 1TB drive and ClearOS pre-installed.

I figured as much also.

What I find disturbing is that these companies don’t have online ordering DB with stock levels so only to sell what they have in stock. Hardly a good sales pitch that they wound be a competent partner for IT.

 

[caplam]

it seems to be a bad promotion campaign which will have the opposite effect of its goal...

 

[nthu9280]

Interesting. I've not received cancellation email but my card has not been charged either. Not holding my breath but I just sent an email to HPE Marketplace support.

 

[techtoys]

I received a simpler reason in an email exchange with Insight.

There was a catalog feed error that occurred and not only should the item not have been available, it showed an incorrect price that made it appear much lower than it actually retailed for. ​

So it's a pricing error as well according to Insight.
There are SKU's available like 873830-S01 without the 1TB drive from Provantage for $326.09

Insight informed me that I will be receiving the formal cancellation notice and that all orders were being cancelled.

 

[Joel]

873830-S01 without the 1TB drive from Provantage for $326.09

That seems to be a more realistic price, though at that level I'd rather pay a bit more for a G8 with Xeon for better driver support.

 

[Joshin]

I received my cancellation notice. This is the third Insight screw-up I've encountered the last few years.

 

[mimino]

Cancelled here as well. Darn, was really hoping this would ship

 

[e97]

Unless you are buying at least $100k annual sales its not worth it to them to take the loss.

Got bored so I priced out a similar system at microcenter: Athlon PRO 200GE (~$50) + B450 motherboard ($60-$90) + 8GB of ECC UDIMM ($60, Amazon, ebay) + 400+W PSU ($20) for $220ish shipped.

Throw in a 120GB (500 MB/s) SSD for $20 more.

Granted you dont get the 1TB HDD or iTX case but this is more expandable and more powerful, and a bit more power (35W CPU)