Ok, maybe not selling your soul, but so far Dell has had me fill out a quote form explaining all sorts of details as to what my needs are. I fill it out and send it in stressing that all I want is a baseline quote of both the PS4000X and PS4000E with 6TB of storage and I get a call 5 minutes later with some rep asking me the same questions (plus some) in the quote form that I already sent in. She couldn't even tell me the price but said some "storage specialist" would be calling me in 24 hours.
Where can I go to just get the price of what I want without all this garbage? Here's some of the q's on the form:
How do you currently backup your data?
How long can you afford to be down if something happened to your server?
Do you have any legal requirements on how long you must archive your data? (HIPPA regulations, etc)
Do you need a rack or tower server? (Please choose one)
What is more important, current technology and expandability or price?
Is there a budget you need to stay within?
How soon are you needing the server?
Here's the link to one of the 2 models.
Extremely frustrating. Why can't they just configure to order like they do their workstations?
That question isn't that important. What I really want to know is, is there somewhere I can go--a reseller maybe--that will just quote me what I want without all this hassle?
You can try a reseller: http://www.storagebyeagle.com/sanandnas.html is one.
However, the way most of these things work, the first one you talked to gets the best discount. So, in your case, since you already contacted Dell, Eagle will be 5% higher, no matter what. I had the same experience with Equallogic, NetApp, and EMC. Most companies in the "enterprise" products market work this way.
Have a look at the Storage Mojo Price List which includes Equallogic. It's not always up to date but it should give you a good idea on what the market prices for things are.
But if you're looking for an official quote you'll have to deal with some reseller eventually.
It's available here (apparently some EQL reseller): http://www.milesconsultingcorp.com/Equallogic-SAN-Price-List.aspx
It's a bit cheaper than Dell Premier self-quoting prices but you can certainly get at least another 20% off if you or your VAR know how to bargain with Dell. :)