Reasonable alternative for Deciso D840

[ingvarr]

Hi,

I have been very happy with the performance of D840, and the design is lovely. Unfortunately, the communication with the manufacturer was one of the most dreadful I had ever. Everyone was nice, but I wasted more than three months on waiting and repeating the same questions over and over.
This is very much related to an edge case triggered by the warranty issue I have, but nonetheless, the warranty is effectively useless (at least in my country), which suggests to find some alternative hardware.

But the original need still stands. I would like:

• A more or less blackbox solution, so that OPNSense Business can be installed with modest efforts.
• Capabilities and performance on the level of D840 (Netboard A20, 4 cores, 8Gb): throughput with IDPS and at least one SFP+.
• Customer support that answers emails, not only for enterprise accounts.
• Not loud.
• Preferably, rack mountable.

I know there is a wide range of generic servers, but it is very difficult to compare on paper, and any information about noise is very difficult to find, especially for rack mountable devices: most people don't care how loud anything in the rack is.

Still, any relevant personal experiences will be greatly appreciated.

[AdSchellevis]

Hi ingvarr,

Sorry to hear you had issues with the device. As my colleague hopefully told you, you can ship it back to us for repair at any time so we can investigate what the issue is and make sure you receive it back in the state it should be in.

If issues are related to customs, it might be wise to contact them about any concerns that might live there. For business to business orders this is never an issue, but consumer outside of the EU this might be more challenging and depends on the country in question.

Best regards,

Ad

[ingvarr]

Hi Ad,

no objections to anything you said, and I also appreciate the prompt and helpful support I got from you during this story.

Keeping deliveries within EU is a workaround that was discussed on the way, but that is not exactly the problem here.
The outcome was more related to some aspects of overall communication experience: some key questions never answered (or explicitly denied answer which would be fair), time frame stretched indefinitely. This went way beyond my boundary of acceptable roughly two months ago. Consequently, I simply cannot rely on the time estimations of your colleague with whom I was mostly communicating, and the likelihood of staying without appliance for too long is considerable. Besides, that already took inappropriate toll of effort.

Still, please note that I am very angry and frustrated now, so that the above is a biased impression.
I really hope I made it clear that it is an unfortunate personal experience which should not necessarily be considered as basis for any conclusions about the company.

Nevertheless, I would like to evaluate alternative paths. Just looking over alternative devices, unfortunately, does not render an answer easily. This is why I reckoned it would not harm asking, in case someone might have been looking in similar directions.

[AdSchellevis]

Hi ingvarr,

Fair enough, you're free to investigate alternatives at anytime. If somewhere in the near future you do like to return the device for inspection and repair, just let us know.

Best regards,

Ad