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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?"
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Also, if needs are low, common desktop hardware (even outdated hardware) can meet needs sufficiently without the need for a Server OS.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.
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I see mostly American sources for parts. Anyone know of good Canadian suppliers?
...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).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
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.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
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.
. . . 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.)
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
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.
evil is as evil does