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Buying New Commercial IT Hardware Isn't Always Worthwhile (Video)
Ben Blair is CTO of MarkITx, a company that brokers used commercial IT gear. This gives him an excellent overview of the marketplace -- not just what companies are willing to buy used, but also what they want to sell as they buy new (or newer) equipment. Ben's main talking point in this interview is that hardware has become so commoditized that in a world where most enterprise software can be virtualized to run across multiple servers, it no longer matters if you have the latest hardware technology; that two older servers can often do the job of one new one -- and for less money, too. So, he says, you should make sure you buy new hardware only when necessary, not just because of the "Ooh... shiny!" factor" (Alternate Video Link)
Used hardware vendor says rack space is free...run your data center on Pentium 3s. News at 11.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I can't see the video but in the summary he mentions using two old servers to do the job of one new server. I appreciate the recycling, but it sounds like he is talking processing or I/O equivalence, and usually it is power that is the dominating factor in data center effectiveness. Are two servers really cheaper than one when you factor in electricity, cooling, and rack space?
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
...is on an "upgrade" cycle. All equipment with red LEDs needs to be replaced with equipment with blue LEDs, at least on the front face of the equipment.
The CEO toured the data center recently and wanted to see blue LEDs on everything.
What's new about this advice? Was it not as useful and applicable 50, 100, and 1000 years ago?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Guy who sells used computer hardware claims that buying new computer hardware is a bad idea, and that you should buy used gear instead. News at 11.
Not what this guy is saying is wrong, but there are other unaddressed issues. They cover issues like "power savings", but not the much more important issue of buying an unknown piece of hardware from an unknown vendor, without a warranty. Aside from that, sometimes there are issues of physical constraints-- like I have limited space, limited ventilation, and one UPS to supply power. Do I want to buy 5 servers, or one powerful one?
Also, it's not true that hardware isn't advancing. In the past few years, USB has gotten much faster, virtualization support has improved, drives and drive interface has gotten faster, etc.
And sometimes, buying "new" is more about getting a known quantity with support, rather than wagering on a crap-shoot.
Anyone denigrating "Oooooooh! Shiny!!" CLEARLY doesn't understand Slashdot.
What I mean is, most businesses keep everything of importance on their servers. Think of the salaries they pay in total all of their employees who spend time in front of computers each day. Everything you pay them to do is, essentially, tied to those servers. If the server runs a hosted application slowly, then all of your people using that application are forced to work more slowly -- making them less efficient. If a server crashes and people lose access to information until it's brought back up -- even more inefficiencies result.
Now, WHY would you cheap out over what's probably a $10,000 or less price difference buying a new server with a warranty, and some guy's used one that's less powerful (but probably uses just as much electricity and requires just as much cooling)?
As it is, I've never worked anyplace where servers get swapped out all that often. When it's time to shop for a new one, they've typically gotten a good 4 or 5 years of 24 hour/7 day use out of the old one already. (In bigger places where they get upgraded more often, I suspect they do a higher volume of business too -- and make more profit with each server than the places I worked.)
Used servers are nice to resell at steep discounts so "end users" get the opportunity to tinker with them. They're probably great as someone's home media server, or for the software developer who wants to experiment with hosting his/her own software app. They're probably even an option for the people who couldn't ever afford new systems in the first place (like charities running on shoestring budgets). But for most of corporate America -- IMO, servers should be purchased new and used no longer than their warranty period.
And the sad part is some CFO will see the video clip, override the CIO's IT Plan for updating their hardware infrastructure and then complain about a lack of 110% uptime
If you can afford new, you always buy new.
I would add "size" to your list, sometimes newer hardware can allow you to expand your resources, without taking up as much space. However.....
I don't think your rule is universally true. Buying new is like buying a new car. Yea it's great to drive off the lot, get better gas mileage and chances are slim you will find yourself with a broken car sitting on the side of the road, but making the payments forever can be a bitch.
You may not get depreciation, but that must means it's an expense, which comes off the top of your net before taxes, so you get it all this year.
You may get a warranty, but what's a 24 hour SLA worth to a mission critical system? What you need is a fully capable hot standby, which is easier to afford when you are buying used.
Processing Power? I don't know very many applications that *really* need more processing power, which cannot be (and likely SHOULD) effectively split up over multiple servers. Many people think that faster processing means faster application, but this is extremely rare. What's usually needed is more memory or I/O performance which can be had for a song if you buy old hardware and upgrade memory and disk drives with SSD's.
So, where some folks with money go with new, it's not universally true that this is the best use of one's money. Sometimes, if you think about the problem, cheaper, used hardware can serve you well for a lot less coin.
I swear we saw an identical article a few months ago.
Go away.
We do not want your advertisements. Nobody wants your old gear. I pay you guys to haul it away, not sell it back to me on Slashdot.
Next Week; Linux rubbish at server tasks says Microsoft Reseller
We consolidated about 20ish old servers (and added new systems) in to two Dell R720xds that are VM hypervisors. Not only does this save on power n' cooling but it is way faster, more reliable, and flexible. It is much easier and faster to rebuild and stand up a VM, you can snapshot them before making changes, if we need to reboot the hypervisor or update firmware we can migrate VMs over to the other host so there's no downtime. Plus less time is wasted on admining them since there are less systems, and they are newer.
On top of that they have good support contracts, and some excellent reliability features that you didn't get on systems even 5ish years ago (like actively scanning HDDs to look for failures).
Big time win in my book. Now does that mean we rush out and replace them with new units every year? No, of course not, but when the time comes that they are going out of support, or more likely that usage is growing past what they can be upgraded to handle, we'll replace them with newer, more powerful, systems. It is just a much better use of resources.
Roblimo has thick skin. He said so in March when he posted an advertisement for this same service in the disguise of a story. This still looks like front page placement of an ad for a friends company. How much does it cost for front page placement ?
Not everyone can buy used hardware, but for those who can, doing so is a huge money saver ($75K worth of hardware six years ago is now selling for thousands). Case and point, we bought a fully stocked 16-blade system for about $4K with Quad-Core Xeons and 4GB of RAM. People might say that is crap, but not when what you're replacing is already crap of the crap and upgrades are cheap as well. When factoring in clustering, etc, running on used equipment is hardly risky. Support-wise, this stuff usually has software available that is rock-solid because it's been around for a while. So yes, you wouldn't want to run mission-critical apps on it, but you can get a way with running a ton of auxiliary infrastructure. Never mind making for great test systems.
Oh, great, it's hard enough to replace obsolete equipment as it is. Once management sees this, they'll wonder why we can't keep that old Dell server going a few more years - after all, other companies are buying the same server for this guy. IT will never get another upgrade approved ever again if this gets out. Forget the cost savings of lower-power equipment, and the massive throughput increases in newer drives.
Lucky you getting to keep that old Dell server... We have to keep that old 1983 PDP-11 going.
When you have SMB type customers then refurbished hardware is great value. They're usually not willing to fork out for a new server. When there is refurbished hardware for a fraction of the price -- still new enough to be reasonably efficient and to add a HP Care Pack or whatever -- why not? Having hardware that is up to scratch is both good for you and good for your customer. Out of dozens of customers of this nature we've never been bitten (and yes, the customer knows the server is refurb + Care Pack).
It's really great when you get a strong business relationship going with your local refurb business. Getting the pick of the litter really gets your geek juices flowing!
We did have a reasonably strong virtualization setup too, and that helps as the article suggests.
The laptop I am typing this on right now is a refurb model that I got for an excellent price a year and a half ago. It's probably the best laptop I've ever had including brand new ones.
At one point the interviewer asks "how much money you gonna save on electricity for 50 computers, $50/year"? It's clear he's never even attempted to do the math. An extra 100 watts in California is going to cost $314.91 per year at the typical rate (above baseline) of 35.949 cents per year. That's just the savings on one computer system much less 50 computers.