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White Box, Or Big Names for Lower-End Servers?
LazloToth asks: "Those of us who manage small- to medium-size networks face the decision all the time: for the run-of-the-mill web, print, or storage server running on i386 architecture, should we buy HP or Dell, for example, or build it ourselves from commodity hardware and save some bucks up front? In my operation of fewer than 50 servers, one will see a mix of the two. For servers that take more abuse, I tend to buy the proprietary stuff. But not always. I wonder what experiences other admins and managers have had with do-it-yourself servers in a production environment, and whether they feel that white-box servers perform as well - - and last as long - - as anything else? What is the mix in your network of big-names to no-names?"
The contents of the box are pretty generic for most purposes. Motherboard from Asus/Intel/..., BIOS from Phoenix/Award/..., Processor from Intel/AMD/Motorola/...
What really makes a difference is the vendor. I have a local guy who I can call and ask for recommendations and advice. If I tell him I want a Dual Opteron with 12 gig RAM, mirrored 74 GB hot-swap drives, dual hot-swap PS and a rack-mount case of my choosing he personally delivers it a couple days later.
Drive in my raid-array dies? He brings by a replacement the following day.
Oh, and the only number he gives me is his cell phone. And he answers it. Always.
With the exception of some specialized telephony equipment (actually a different white-box vendor specializing in that market - Dell et. al. wouldn't have a clue about this stuff), he is always my first call.
I've been using him for years. When the company he worked for ceased operations he started his own and service has remained outstanding.
I guarantee that nobody who uses the "name brand" machines can come anywhere close to the responsiveness and support that I get from my local vendor.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Only if it is an on-site warranty, and the turn around is guaranteed in a short period of time. I have used White boxes, because I can usuall afford to buy 3 lowend boxes for about the price of a single Dell.
I run webserver and have about 25 boxes. I buy motherboards from only a couple of manufacturers that I trust. I run commodity Harddrives, and use rsync rather than fancy scsi. I look at the individual warranty on the parts.
I generally save enough $$ that I can buy the server and a "hot-spare" for well less than the price of a name brand box. I have had relatively few hardware issues, and even the ones I did have could be fixed quickly and cheaply. It is nice when no single component costs more than about $150.
I guess in essense I am warrantying it myself, warranties do no good if the server is going to be down for any length of time and you are dependent on a big companies whims.
-MS2k
After I lost my second finger in the sharp guts of a whitebox system while trying to fix it (again), I decided to go with brand-name and I never looked back.
I work in a fairly large datacenter, where I help support many of our colocated customer's equipment. Some of which we sell and maintain, some of which they purchase and colocate. I've seen a good mix of generic servers that were custom built because there was no pre-built options available. But when it comes to support - there are few options when things go down.
Motherboard company blames ram, ram company blames raid card manufacturer, raid card says it's a bad firmware version of the motherboard... two hours later, server is still down. Who's going to let us swap out a motherboard just to see if it works?
I don't see a price advantage to whitebox servers compared to modern server hardware from the big names. Anyone who's just looking at the price tag is fooling themselves.
Dell's hardware is unimpressive, I'll give a nod to the previous responder who mentioned that. And storage subsystems are still insane. Even with the evolution of SATA for slower mass storage, cost/MB is still too high with these subsystems.
Beware of a name brand's inexpensive servers. Some of the rock bottom units are cheap, but they lack some of the basics like raid, hot swap drives, expandability... On the bright side, even if you go with these cheap units, you'll still have service and support from a major player.
You take the four year old Dell Optiplexes within your organization that otherwise just go to a salvage aucton. You install Linux or a BSD OS on them.
'Big Name' at lower-than-white-box prices. Voila!
resigned
I have to query this, I'm sorry:
Are you telling us you assemble ("roughly") 1 PC every 10m 37s? Does that include unpacking? All screws? Cable ties? Boot tests?
Decent machines, but the power-supplies weren't up to the 24x7 operation and tended to eventually have the fans sieze up, causing the ps to overheat.
Oh yeah, big time Achilles Heel of the generic PC, assuming name brand mobo and stuff.
It's just impossible to get a good power supply in a generic PC. ("Good" means built with decent quality components, like the Astecs and Lambdas you'll find in proprietary systems. It does not mean "Comes with a ThermalTake Fan and is the choice of 14-year-olds and overclockers!".)
My best success was based on a simple formula: the power-to-weight ratio. Buy the heaviest supply marked with a given advertised wattage rating.
Then, for server use, step 2 is to open up the supply and replace all the made-in-Bangladesh-or-Taiwan-or-China electrolytic capacitors with Spragues or Nichicons rated AT LEAST 1.5x the voltage ratings of the capacitors which were in there. And then out comes the no-name 12V fan, only to be replaced with a (loud! expensive! moves a hell of a lot of air! lasts forever!) Comair Rotron 120V fan running directly off the power line. Also gives you a chance to fix the *many* cold solder joints you're likely to find in commodity power supplies. All told, usually under an hour per supply, with the new fan often costing more than the supply!
Since I started doing this, I haven't had a single failure of one of my white-box server supplies.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.