Simon Jolle sjolle wrote:
On 05/15/2008 04:24 PM, Sam Drinkard wrote:
About 2 years ago, I build a server
[...]
What are the advantages of building your own server comparing with
products from HP, Dell and IBM? Is it cheaper?
I never heard of DIY server hardware market.
Well, there is always the category of home servers... in my case, these
are usually handmedown PCs, old, too slow to be a modern desktop, but
perfectly usefull as firewalls, DNS/mail/web servers, etc. My current
home server is a 10 year old P2 450Mhz rock solid board. But, I'd
never use something like this in a business where its mission critical.
I, for one (an opinionated one at that:D) do NOT recommend homebrewing
proper rackmount servers from raw parts... storage integration issues
alone can break a project like that.
there's a middle ground... folks like Intel and Tyan make 'server
bases', or kit servers, which comes with the rack chassis, hotswap
backplanes, disk drive trays, mainboard and power supply, you just
supply the CPUs, RAM, disk drives, and any extra cards you need.
6 or so years ago I built up and deployed a pair of Intel SE7501WV2 2U
kits in my development lab at work, with dual xeon 2.8ghz and 3GB ram.
these machines have run flawlessly running RHEL/CentOS. My department
had no capital budget, and we could get these kit servers on 'expense'
money, then populate them with our 'misc' budget. fully configured
these were way under 1/2 what we'd have paid for a comparable HP or
Dell. This would be the equivalent system with today's chipset and
CPUs,
http://developer.intel.com/design/servers/platforms/SR1500-2500/index.htm
(the SR2500AL). The SKU SR2500ALLXR (2U, mobo, 1 of 2 PSUs, and 5 x
SATA/SAS 3.5" hotswap backplane) goes for $1300-1600 street prices
(wow, just about what I paid for the SE7501WV2 6 years ago! hmmm, when I
bought mine, the slimline CD was standard, now its optional, oh well)
these Intel server kits are even setup so you can 'brand' them for VAR
applications, they have downloads that let you put your own name on the
BIOS startup and so forth. In fact, the SE7501 2U servers I have were
branded by Sun when they initially reentered the x86 server market, as
the SunFire V65x
What you get with a brand name server (HP, Dell, etc) is a warranty and
onsite support. This is critical to some deployments and sites, and
fairly superfluous to others.
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