What Does NBD Parts-Only Support Mean for Your Business?

NBD Parts Only is a type of service level agreement (SLA). It’s one of the least responsive service agreement available in the TPM space in terms of mean time to acknowledge and repair. This kind of Parts Only Warranty (POW) is best suited for those less critical dev/test/backup environments that are relatively self-sufficient, but still require some form of support should downtime strike. 

Continue reading to learn about NBD Parts Only support and what it means for IT infrastructure. 

What Does NBD Parts-Only Mean? 

As the name suggests, NBD Parts Only stipulates parts replacement by Next Business Day. This means that when replacement parts are processed for shipping before the end of business day (EOB), they should be available at your organization’s location the following day before closure of business (COB). 

Parts Only implies that replacement parts are shipped to your business location without a local onsite tech to assist. Consequently, parts-only clients will have to rely on their in-house tech team to install, test, and certify that the part is fine and working properly. This is typically no issue for plug-and-play components such as drives and power supplies. 

What Is Included in My NBD Parts-Only Support Contract? 

NBD Parts Only support stipulates Monday-Friday, 8AM – 5PM service for next business day parts replacement. This covers full parts replacement and on-site spares kits for any supported faulty hardware including but not limited to: power supplies, hard drives, fans, controllers, motherboards, cables, and CPUs. 

Understand that this 8 am – 5 pm assistance window pertains to parts delivery and replacement, and is not an indication of mean time to acknowledge (MTTA). In most cases, TPM account executives will respond to a parts replacement email request within just 10-20 minutes. After gathering all necessary model and location information, support providers will then simply overnight the spare and pass along tracking information.  

Under Which Circumstances Is NBD Parts-Only Support My Best Option? 

Test, Dev, Backup, DR Environments 

There’s no need to spend top dollar on first-party maintenance for your testing, development, backup, or disaster recovery environments. If infrastructure has a history of being relatively self-sufficient, workloads/data are not mission critical, and 12-24 hours of downtime would not be detrimental to normal business operations, 24x7x4 support is simply a waste of company resources. Rationalize your yearly maintenance spend and consider making the switch from OEM maintenance to an NBD Parts Only SLA. 

Organizations Looking to Reduce Annual Maintenance Spend 

Following the economic impact of Covid-19, covering the cost of parts may be all the support your company can afford. And while NBD Parts-Only SLAs may not be great for mission critical environments, it may be the most affordable support option.  

What If I Want Something More Responsive? 

Your data center is complex. Not all equipment requires 24/7 monitoring with a four hour response window. And conversely, some systems need a bit more than just NBD parts. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to support which is why Park Place Technologies offers an extensive range of support levels for our data center maintenance services.  

Level 1 – 7/24/4 

7 days a week, 24 hours a day, reaction within 4 hours 

• 7×24 Help Desk 
• 7×24 Monitoring
• Initial Phone-Based Diagnosis 
• Field Engineer on-site (if required) within 4 hours after customer contact 
• On-Site Spares Kit 
• Parts Replacement 
• Certified Experts 

Level 2 – 5/9/4 

8 hours a day, 5 working days per week, reaction within 4 hours 

• 8am-5pm Help Desk 
• 8am-5pm Monitoring 
• Initial Phone-Based Diagnosis
• Field Engineer on-site (if required) within 4 hours after customer contact 
• On-Site Spares Kit 
• Parts Replacement 
• Certified Experts 

Level 3 – Next Day 

Next business day response/parts 

• Initial Phone-Based Diagnosis  
• Field Engineer on-site (if required) the following business day after customer contact 
• On-Site Spares Kit 
• Parts Replacement
• Certified Experts