Where Do You Shop for Server Components?

Devi0s asks: "Along with many other Slashdot readers, I have been building my own PCs for years. I use hardware review sites such as Ars Technica, Tech Report, and Tom's Hardware Guide to research the components and pick out the best, and I use PriceWatch and ResellerRatings to find the best deals and to make sure I am dealing with a reputable vendor. I work in a small consulting firm where money is tight, and I'd like to test the waters with a few ideas of my own. In each case, various servers and external storage enclosures are needed on the cheap that will be pushed to their limits. Are Slashdot readers building their own servers and storage enclosures? What web sites provide the latest news, research, and and comparisons for server hardware? Where do you go to buy server components and vet your vendor?"

Comments

Cost analysis

[BWJones]

Time is money. Lots of it and as any person who has done any hiring (especially in small to mid size businesses) will tell you, personnel costs are among the largest financial obligations you will have bar none. Therefore, I actually find it more cost effective to 1) perform an analysis to best determine needs based on anticipated traffic (Slashdottings aside) [GRIN], and 2) purchase a complete system from a vendor based upon the outcomes of the analysis. Spending time rolling your own hardware can be cost effective in some circumstances, but do not overlook the time you are spending on this project. A simple cost analysis should suffice.

Also, if needs are low, common desktop hardware (even outdated hardware) can meet needs sufficiently without the need for a Server OS. (I have an old G3 iMac running a desktop OS X serving up one of the oldest online textbooks available on the Internet, Webvision which routinely serves up about 45,000 hits/day of graphics intensive webpages). For larger needs or e-commerce for medium to large businesses, you obviously need something more substantial. After looking at solutions from Dell, Sun and SGI, and a local whitebox builder, believe it or not, Apple makes some pretty nice servers servers at very cost competitive points. We will likely be picking up a couple in the near future for some very heavy data intensive work we are embarking on. The nice thing about these solutions is that we can develop the code cross platform from some Linux workstations and fairly simply deploy on the Xserves.

Re:Cost analysis

[magefile]

also, if needs are low, common desktop hardware (even outdated hardware) can meet needs sufficiently without the need for a Server OS

Absolutely. The company I'm at right now does benefits-explanation and healthcare-education sites that firms can present to their employees as if it's their own. We have maybe 2 dozen small clients and two or three big ones (think Fortune 500), but until recently we've used 2 eMacs and 3 old iMacs to do it all. We've upgraded, but we probably didn't need to ... the boss just likes shiny things.

Re:Cost analysis

[ylon]

Very fast actually, I'm not seeing any noticeable slow down on a 3Mb connection, actually zooms right along in terms of downloading images, etc. from the site. Yes, I concur. Mac OS X/Xserves are quite excellent and that is the route we are taking. We were using FreeBSD and Linux, now turning to an all Mac shop.

Re:Cost analysis

[Necrobruiser]

Therefore, I actually find it more cost effective to...purchase a complete system from a vendor

I spent a lot of time trying to convince my last boss that the money he was saving by buying components from 3-4 different vendors was being eaten by the cost of my time to put the components together, and by paying for shipping from each vendor. So we purchased a few pre-built computers from a vendor, and discovered that the trained monkeys that they had hired to build the computers would not push the memory in all the way, or wouldn't plug in the hard drive, and, in one case, sent us a motherboard that was either bad when it was built, or didn't survive shipping. In the end, I ended up having to spend almost as much time fixing the boxes as it would have taken me to build them by myself, and when all was said and done, I no longer had the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that the computer was put together properly. I had to admit to my boss that I was wrong, and until I left, we built all of our boxes ourselves.

Re:Cost analysis

[plover]

Not that I know or understand your company's financial situation, but if you do decide to roll-your-own server, I'd recommend purchasing the components from a local source with knowledgable staff (if you're completely alone on this.) A second pair of eyes to help you if you get stuck is a valuable resource, and the slight premium you'll pay could prove to be cheap insurance.

Some of the local places around here are only a few dollars above pricewatch figures, and they'll even assemble and test the machine for you for an extra $60.

I buy all my hardware from the locals, and it's saved my butt more than once.

Re:Cost analysis

[AusG4]

A G3 iMac, even one of the originals at 233mhz, is a pretty powerful little machine in terms of serving standard, static content via Apache.

That machine could saturate a 10 Mbps connections easily, and could likely make a good run a 100 Mbps connection at that.

Re:Cost analysis

[Magic5Ball]

Their cases are aluminum, while that may be l33t it also means they are fragile as all get out.

Presumably, you speak of Apple's Xserve product, since you don't actually specify what you try to bash here.

The benefits from increased thermal transfer efficiencies and decreased mass far outweigh the cost of having to service the units according to the included instruction manuals and safe electronics handling techniques. Properly installed Xserves in fixed racks aren't generally subject to conditions that would compromise the structural integrity of the case.

Twist a screw too tight and you have stripped the damned thing.

Poor motor control or inappropriate use of power tools will strip threads on any case.

The rail racks are also just poorly designed. Compare them to something made by HP or Dell and see for yourself.

In your professional engineering estimation, how might the Apple product be improved? What exactly would you change?

Go ahead and muck with those postfix or samba conf files but don't come crying to apple when it decides to wipe your configuration and put it's own instead.

If you know how to manually configure a service by editing the config file, you don't need the GUI. If you don't know about making backup copies of config files before editing them, you have no business configuring a server.

Whatever point you attempted to make is moot in professional environments.

You want to learn brand new commands for everything? I thought you did. Virtually none of the commands you have reached for over the years work.

The vast majority of POSIX commands and options work for me. What command set did you learn and why do you assume that everyone else learned the same?

Don't even get me started on darwinports....

Please indulge me and the rest of the community with your insights so that we may improve the software.

Although, feel no pressure to answer until you've been to a server room with working computers in it.

Canadian sources?

[fpp]

I see mostly American sources for parts. Anyone know of good Canadian suppliers?

Kinda depends...

[KC7GR]

...on what you're looking for. I'm no expert on putting together big systems for enterprise environments, so I'll leave that type of reply to others.

However, I do know a great deal about digging around on the surplus market. If you're looking to put together your own servers, perhaps for self-hosting of your Internet presence, you can save tons of $$ by hitting up used-computer stores and electronic surplus places.

As just one example: My former employer (Boeing) retired a number of enterprise-class servers a few years back. Among these was a Compaq ProLiant 6500, tricked out with triple Pentium Pro 200 CPU's, twin redundant power supplies, a RAID controller, two-port Ethernet card, and the front-panel diagnostic display.

That system probably had a five-figure price tag when it was first sold. I picked it up for about $150, and spent another $100 or so on enough nine-gigger drives to create a RAID-5 stack. I added on another external RAID bay, with drives, for about another $100, and had one heck of a reliable FTP archive and database system for less than $400.

At the risk of Slashdotting my own site, I've got listings of electronic and computer surplus places in California, Oregon, and Washington up at this link.

Keep the peace(es).

this is great

[ubiquitin]

I'm getting such a kick out of this thread. With the exception of drives (always buy those new from whoever pricewatch recommends that day), I basically get all my stuff from bottom-feeding off of eBay. So basically, the rest of you suckers are covering my hardware depreciation for me. Hey, thanks guys. And before you give me shit about what's server class and what's low end, know that I've saturated T3's with performance-tuned celerons funning *bsd. Last year's hardware on OpenBSD trumps next year's hardware on Microsloth. Like they said in Austin Powers, it ain't the size, mate, it's how you USE it!

Strictly cash and carry for me...

[bechthros]

Well, I'll probably be in the minority here, but since I don't have a bank account or a credit card, there's a couple local shops I go to for almost everything, component-wise (though I think I did get my last CD burner from WalFart). It's instant retail gratification, they carry most of what I need for a marginal markup, and they can be bargained with in ways WalMart and Office Depot can't. Plus I get to feel all warm and tingly about supporting local merchants.

Penguin Computing

[ThogScully]

I've setup a couple servers from Penguin Computing and have been ecstatic with the results. Pricing out server-specific components really doesn't save money and you get a nice warranty with a system. And the racks I bought from Penguin were top-notch. When I did have a hardware problem (which wasn't their fault), they replaced the hardware instantaneously and we never even had downtime.

Time is money and they saved me a bunch of both.
-N

Re:monarch

[bulkmailforyou]

I agree the support burden for building systems for family and friends is difficult, but it can be just as bad when you recommend they buy from one of the well known PC vendors and they get poor service from them and you end up supporting the system anyway. I have found that this will take up more time than when I have built systems. At least when something goes bad, I know what it is exactly already and can order a suitable replacement for them quickly rather than deal with the red tape and untrained outsourced support. I have a few horror stories but I will spare you the gory details. Not to say support from the big PC vendors is uniformly bad, I don't think it is, but I couldn't tell you what the best ones would be. Even if they have good support today, they might not in a month or two.

Don't build good . . .

[ZorbaTHut]

. . . build lots.

Seriously. I don't care how good of a system you buy, someday something *will* go wrong and it'll go bottom up. If that's the only server you bought you're now down for the count.

On the other hand, if you bought three much cheaper commodity servers, then even if two of them go down you can probably still keep *something* going. Same basis as RAID.

Anybody who makes the assumption that good quality components means they won't melt down is setting themselves up for disappointment - and if they're lucky, it won't lead to severe financial problems.

Redundancy is king.

(Of course, in some cases, it's not practical - but I'd always choose it over individual part quality if possible. And as your scale goes up, it gets more and more practical.)

Re:Dell corporate

[killjoe]

Aahh Dell. Otherwise known as "the vendor whose name rhymes with hell".

No two machines coming out of dell are alike. We have had batches of five that had different components in them. Don't even get me started on proprietary firmware on crucial devices like fiber channel cards.

Re:Dell corporate

[dourk]

We recently purchased 2 new machines at work (very small company) from Dell. They were a hundred bucks cheaper on the "home" site than on the business site. And they came with free printers.

We couldn't buy the home ones on our business account. After 2 hours of bitching on the phone, we got the $100 price break, but no printers.

The machines run great (for a windows machine :), but I'm left with this really slimy feeling in my gut about dell.

They are bad about RMA #'s!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Newegg refused to provide a RMA #

We had that problem when we received a bad batch of Antec power supplies from Newegg. We ended-up dealing directly with Antec to get them replaced. Rather than taking a couple of weeks if Newegg had done their job, it took us about 11 weeks to get Antec to replace them.

Personally I

[macdaddy]

don't do much in the way of reviewing. I buy a helluva lot of gear though. I find the best deals at Pricewatch and Froogle, of course and I check new resellers at ResellerRatings.com. I also have a handful of companies I buy from regularly. For example I buy a lot of gear from Newegg, and I do mean a lot. I'll pay a few bucks extra (they usually aren't the cheapest around but they are usually pretty close) just to deal with a company I'm familiar with and who I know ships pretty quickly. I buy from:

Newegg

8anet, also known as AcmeMicro

Racks And Stands

Sybercom

TechOnWeb

Amazon (I buy a lot through Amazon because I get a referal kickback for links from my website which is nice)

AccuPC

There are a lot more I'm sure but I can't think of all of them off the top of my head. Oh, I have bought from Monarch Computers also. There are some companies I won't buy from eve again. The main one that comes to mind is Computer Giants. Those folks tried to scam me once on a Maxtor hard drive that went DOA in the first couple of days of testing. Like all the people posting complaints about them on ResellerRatings they tried to con me into paying return shipping to send the DOA drive back. They also said I'd have to pay one of their people to test the drive and confirm it was DOA. Otherwise I'd have to pay to have it sent back to me. Most people find that the drives are OEM or used and that they are selling them as new retail. Yeah, they're a bunch of asshats. That's why merchant review sites are so essential to buying on the Internet. You can't walk into an Internet store, get in a manager's face, and demand your money back for the lemon they sold you when you buy something online. You have to rely on other people's experiences to weed out the crooks. Fortunately for me Maxtor was exceptionally nice about the whole thing and took care of replacing out DOA drive with a brand new replacement. Nice folks @ Maxtor.

Anyhow, I don't always buy the lowest price on Pricewatch and Froogle. I'll buy from a company I know it's going to try and screw me even if I have to pay a little more. I always check eBay before placing an order too. Take for example one of my recent eBay purchases. I priced rack-mount patch cable organizer (wire routing gear) on Froogle. I found a decent model by APC for $25/each. I just happened to search ebay before buying and low and hehold I found Leviton cable organizers for $4.99/each. Each! Ha! Needless to say I bought 4 instead of 1. They are also built extremely well. Always check eBay before buying something online. You may find it for half the price (or less!).

Dell is not worth it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, Dell?? The company I work for has had almost 100% failure on Dell's 1650 blades, Dell finally replaced the last 2 before they died as well. And forget the LTO tape libraries... Our system has been -REPLACED- 3 times and we still get finger pointing between Dell and Veritas as to whose issue it is. I pity any one who buys a Dell. But everyone should know DELL stands for "Dumb Execs Like the Logo", so I guess they are here to stay. I don't know about the servers, but I have found Micron PCs [www.buympc.com] to come with excellent customer service when it comes to warrantied part replacement. Hell it takes as long to get a part replacement from Micron as it does to find competent employee at Dell...

Secondary Market is a viable solution

[flipper65]

Well, here goes, (flame on everyone). I work in a hosting environment where the demands on CPU are low and storage is high. I don't need the whizziest new processor in my NOC to do a great job for my clients. I stick with one platform (Dell Poweredges in my case) and I began purchasing on ebay. I now have a very good relationship with one vendor, I pay about one quarter of what a new server would cost, I get a 30 day warranty from the vendor (and we torture test the machines for about a week upon receipt) and I have a NOC full of quad processor, Raid5, redundant servers that I am very happy with and which do the job quite well. Not only that, but replacemnt parts are a snap to buy direct from Dell.

what's wrong with E-Bay?

[ericbrow]

I've had much better luck with E-Bay than I've had with Pricewatch. Once you get the feel for reputable vendors on ebay (look for high feedback, positive feed back, reasonable shipping costs, good item description) the prices are always better. I've been had by several vendors on Pricewatch. Some of the things I've gotten have been used, extreme difficulty in returning things, and so on.

What's even better about ebay, once you find a good vendor, you can keep an eye on their other auctions, or just purchase from them directly. One terminal server I purchased for an excellent price. I asked if he had more for that same price, and he sold me several more. He even had memory for 25% of market price for the servers.