What is third-party maintenance?
Third-party maintenance is hardware repair and replacement from someone other than the manufacturer. You keep the equipment you already own. Coverage can run during the warranty, after it ends, and after the product is end-of-life or end-of-service-life.
The short version
When a disk, power supply, or controller fails, someone has to diagnose it, bring a part, and put the system back in production. The manufacturer will do that work — at a renewal price built around the next refresh. A third-party maintenance provider does the same repair on the same hardware, on a contract you control.
NETRAID has done this since 2004. One contract can cover mixed brands, mixed service levels, and hardware the manufacturer no longer supports.
What TPM covers
Servers, storage, network, tape, GPU nodes, and hyperconverged appliances — current generation, last generation, post-warranty, end-of-life (EOL), and end-of-service-life (EOSL).
It does not replace a software subscription you still need. It replaces the hardware support line on the invoice.
When teams switch
Usually one of these is true: the warranty is ending and the renewal is two or three times the original; a product is EOSL and the vendor will only quote a refresh; the room now has four manufacturers and four support contracts; or a GPU row is going in and the OEM quote assumes you buy the next chassis too.
TPM is how you keep supporting the hardware you already paid for, without stacking another manufacturer contract on top of it.
What you should expect
A same-day quote from an asset list. You can mix service levels — 24×7×2 on production, next-business-day on the lab — with engineers typically within 20 miles and parts staged nearby. Tickets go through the Client Portal.
NETRAID quotes typically land around 70% below a manufacturer renewal. You pay for parts, local engineers, and the service level you actually use.
FAQ
Common questions.
Is third-party maintenance the same as a break/fix shop?
Break/fix is a ticket with no contract. TPM is a contract: named service levels, parts on hand, and an engineer who already knows the room. Time-and-materials is still available for gear that is not on contract.
Can TPM run while the OEM warranty is still active?
Yes. Some rooms keep a manufacturer line on a subset of systems and put the rest with NETRAID. Gap coverage and dual coverage are quoted from the asset list.
Does TPM include firmware and software?
Hardware repair and replacement are the core. OS support is a separate line (AIX, IBM i, Windows Server, ESXi, and others). Firmware policy is scoped on the quote so it matches what you are allowed to run.
Same-day quote
Request a quote.
Serials, an export, or a photo of the rack. We return a scoped quote the same business day.
Request a same-day quote.
Tell us the service you need. Hardware quotes typically land 70% below the manufacturer.