Buy vs Build your server, let the debate begin

A

awesomo

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Mar 20, 2010
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I have been arguing with myself on this issue for a while with no answer, so I thought I'd argue with someone else to try and get somewhere.

I "think" I need 2u atom servers for small businesses to handle either pfsense or small phone systems. I have been using Supermicro stuff for years without a hitch and their new dual-core atom server boards are tempting.

So far I have:
+ Way cheaper to buy and run, I can actually get an atom board in a usable form factor. Dell's 2u offerings are expensive.

- If something should break, parts may be hard to come by. Dell's 2u offerings are way more powerful, but that will go to waste in a 15 person office.
 
Buy. If I have a part fail I want a new one overnight (if not 4 hours), and if it failed under warranty I want it for free including the shipping.

For home use, buy used unless you want a tower in which case build.
 
I'd buy unless you can pretty much build 2 o them for the same cost. That way if something goes down you have a spare until you get the parts rma'd
 
swatbat said:
I'd buy unless you can pretty much build 2 o them for the same cost. That way if something goes down you have a spare until you get the parts rma'd
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+1 on this... If you can't swing the hardware cost to keep a spare on-site, then supportability certainly should play into the cost calculations. For example, if you get hit by a bus, it'll also be easier for someone else to step in and support Dell (or another name brand) than to support a custom built solution.

For business, it's worthwhile to pay some extra money to get better response times on support... Like insurance, you hope you never need to use it... But when you do, that extra $200 or whatever is pocket change compared to money spent for wasted time, even in a 15 person office.

Oversimplified example: Figure you've got a 15 person office of people who each only make $25K per year {cheap labor!)... Even if only half of them can't work because the server's down, that's still $90 / hour wasted when the server's down. Hence, you'd recoup the extra $200 if you avoid 2.2 hours of downtime....

Don't forget to look at other hardware suppliers too. HP often has some really good deals on their "Smart Buy" preconfigured systems.
 
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I mainly bring this issue up because I want low powered servers and I just can't find any from the name brand companies.

This specific company, I have already purchased a 2u server from Dell with the support agreement (did you know no matter the length of the agreement hdd's are only covered for a year?). But now they want phones, and they want it rackmount. The cheapest 2u server from Dell is $900 and it's a quad core. Quite a bit over kill for small phone systems. In the past, I have used Dell servers or custom built (custom only on the pricipal of always having a fully assembled and working backup).

Do to the support issue's everyone seems to be echoing, I may as well just say goodbye to my low power dream (unless I build 2 and make an HA cluster) and buy a quad core 2u from Dell for the phones...
 
Another vote for buy. I've had to maintain both and the servers that were purchased and had service contracts on them were much easier to maintain.
 
If its for a small phone system, you could do something like a B Stock option from CDW or some other distributor. The servers still have the original warranty on them, but are cheaper and may have slightly older specs which could work too. The hardware usually isn't broken or anything, its still looks new. You still get the support you want, but without the headaches of building your own. It might not be as cheap as building the server, but a good compromise.
 
For generic business needs.
For entry-level server with 4 or less disk slots + ECC RAM --> Buy
IF quality low-cost tier-1 used equipment (need analysis for confirmation) --> Buy

IF you need 6+ disk slots per server multiple units, may need to consider built for certain combinations if you are short on cash because prices of tier-1 server models for these kind of situations rise much higher proportionally. Usually you will be asked to consider external storage enclosure which also cost money for tier-1 gears.

If you insist on storage demand but find tier-1 premium overwhelming, build is an option under this particular scenario.
 
"Buy Tier-1"....aka HP or Dell or IBM or some other reputable brand with solid support and warranty.

Although what you're using them for isn't quite what I pictured for typical "server" use..I'm thinking active directory, file storage, exchange e-mail, database, etc etc.

Walking into a potential new SMB client, if I see home grown cloner motherboard of the month club junk....I make it clear up front, if I'm to take over their network..they are going to tier-1 equipment in an XXX period of time.

I have no problem with home built stuff for home users, hell I love making ultimate gaming machines myself for home or the occasional friend. But for businesses...never.

*Support..Tier-1 stuff is most likely able to have replacement parts shipped overnight...or depending on support package...same day...4 hours even. No need to go on the hunt of some wonky Adaptec RAID controller for several days that someone bought on sale 2.3 years ago when building the server and you have a hard time finding now.

*What if you get hit by a bus, and the next IT propeller head consultant the company finds to take over their network has to stare at your contraption like a deer caught in headlights when it goes wrong.

*Tested and standarized compatible parts...you know all the components of a Tier-1 server will work together and with other industry standard parts without conflict. No need to spend 5x months trying to find out why the system locks up once a week only to find out that the onboard Via Rhine NIC on the el cheapo motherboard has an occasional IRQ conflict with some SCSI controller you're using for the backup drive.
 
awesomo said:
I mainly bring this issue up because I want low powered servers and I just can't find any from the name brand companies.

This specific company, I have already purchased a 2u server from Dell with the support agreement (did you know no matter the length of the agreement hdd's are only covered for a year?). But now they want phones, and they want it rackmount. The cheapest 2u server from Dell is $900 and it's a quad core. Quite a bit over kill for small phone systems. In the past, I have used Dell servers or custom built (custom only on the pricipal of always having a fully assembled and working backup).

Do to the support issue's everyone seems to be echoing, I may as well just say goodbye to my low power dream (unless I build 2 and make an HA cluster) and buy a quad core 2u from Dell for the phones...
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In all of the "low power" comments, I haven't seen any metric of what is desired... not to mention what hardware requirements that the phone and any other potentially off-loaded services would need.

From my own experience, I can share that we have several Dell R310's doing some heavier lifting than I think you'll initially be doing, and the front LED display reports ~90 watts of power usage. We also have a R710 for a test environment (running SQL 2008, a custom application, IIS, and some file sharing) for an internal group that reports ~150 watts on the front LED. Either of these numbers could easily be consumed by a typical desktop machine that your client would use.
 
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In my initial post I was looking towards atom's for low power. At ~30-40watts with low heat output, they are perfect.

To give you an idea, a 15 extension asterisk based system with 5 simultaneous calls could be handled on a 500mhz amd geode. That is why I've initially been reluctant to use a quad core for such trivial tasks. Why not virtualize? Because it needs direct access to hardware.

The 2u server that was purchased is an r710. I currently am looking at a poweredge 2u 2970 for the phones. The price is decent at ~$1000 for a system that could handle hundreds of calls and extensions. Terribly overkill, but, it looks like this is the safer way to go from a reliability and support standpoint.

The PfSense box I'm still on edge about. Most likely I will go with a Netgate appliance again.
 
Either SuperMicro or the NetGates.....I would look into their warranty options and ability to ship overnight. I'm going to get a SuperMicro 1U Atom D510 (or maybe wait for the D525) unit for home. But for a client or business production...I'd want to know of the availability of parts to be shipped overnight via warranty. For extra comfy feeling...invest in buying 2 for the job of o1..if one shits the bed, take the backup unit out of the box.
 
Note....when/if looking at the SuperMicro Atom boxes...get the models with the Intel NICs..not the cheapo realsuck NICs.
 
Funny you should mention that. The super micro atom server boards are what got me to start this discussion. When I was looking, I was also disgusted at the fact most of them had those crap realtek nic's. When those atom server mobo's were announced, they only had dual intel nic's...

If I do go that route for the pfsense box, I will probably be building two 1u's, just to have one on hand.
 
awesomo said:
snip........ (did you know no matter the length of the agreement hdd's are only covered for a year?).........snip
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This has become pretty standard for OEM SATA disks accross the industry. Low end servers are a cut-throat business... Every dollar counts (as you can tell by this discussion, low power quest non-withstanding).... So, server vendors are buying the OEM disks and cutting costs by negotiating 1 Yr warranties with the disk manufacturer... Then they pass the savings on to us!

Otherwise, SATA disks are so inexpensive now... Since SATA is a dedicated channel per device, and most of the issues with mixing & matching different disks (manufacturer, firmware level, etc) on the same controller are a thing of the past... its not really a big deal to just buy a new off-the-shelf SATA disk to replace a failed drive.
 
jpochedl said:
This has become pretty standard for OEM SATA disks accross the industry. Low end servers are a cut-throat business... Every dollar counts (as you can tell by this discussion, low power quest non-withstanding).... So, server vendors are buying the OEM disks and cutting costs by negotiating 1 Yr warranties with the disk manufacturer... Then they pass the savings on to us!

Otherwise, SATA disks are so inexpensive now... Since SATA is a dedicated channel per device, and most of the issues with mixing & matching different disks (manufacturer, firmware level, etc) on the same controller are a thing of the past... its not really a big deal to just buy a new off-the-shelf SATA disk to replace a failed drive.
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My thoughts exactly, Dell want $250 for a 250gb 7200rpm sata drive, WHAT?! and a 1 year warranty. No thanks, I'll get some Enterprise drives and trays, and install them myself. I have plenty of spares on hand for same day replacement.
 
awesomo said:
My thoughts exactly, Dell want $250 for a 250gb 7200rpm sata drive, WHAT?! and a 1 year warranty. No thanks, I'll get some Enterprise drives and trays, and install them myself. I have plenty of spares on hand for same day replacement.
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You need to go through a dell rep. Think I paid 100 bucks a 500 gig drive with cage from them last time. More expensive then just buying them somewhere else but this way the system is fully supported.
 
I went through a Dell Rep. He knocked $200 off the entire system. Leaving the drives still overpriced.
 
If you can afford to deal with trying to find proprietory parts, and support is very important buy.
If you don't care so much about support (you're a tech, it's your job to support it afterall) and don't want to worry about what to do if a part fails, then build. Also way cheaper.

The nice thing about building is parts are usually standard and easy to find/replace. You also won't get raped on stuff like hard drives.
 
Red Squirrel said:
If you can afford to deal with trying to find proprietory parts, and support is very important buy.
If you don't care so much about support (you're a tech, it's your job to support it afterall) and don't want to worry about what to do if a part fails, then build. Also way cheaper.

The nice thing about building is parts are usually standard and easy to find/replace. You also won't get raped on stuff like hard drives.
Click to expand...

That's the thing when you buy from Tier-1...you dont have to go find proprietary parts..you let warranty overnight (or sooner) them to you with as little as 1 phone call. And you can rest assured that spare parts are stocked and available for quite a period of time. For me, that means the least amount of time spent on the phone, no cost, knowing I'll have that part tomorrow.

My experience is actually quite the opposite of the above when it comes to cloner motherboard of the month club builds....I've learned over the years from experience to dread calls for problem servers when the servers are cloners.
 
For my servers at home, I build my own, because they are cheaper that way and if something decides to break, I can wait until I can have the part shipped to my house or when I can afford it. For the servers at work, I like buying servers from a name like HP or Dell. It's always nice whenever we have issues with our servers, we can usually get parts the next day.
 
for a work situtation??


BUY BUY BUY!

ive been in a situation with mutiple simultaneous server failures. Trying to track down parts at a moment like that (it can happen) would be a nightmare. (think your employer is already theatening/screaming down your neck!) :eek:
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
That's the thing when you buy from Tier-1...you dont have to go find proprietary parts..you let warranty overnight (or sooner) them to you with as little as 1 phone call. And you can rest assured that spare parts are stocked and available for quite a period of time. For me, that means the least amount of time spent on the phone, no cost, knowing I'll have that part tomorrow.

My experience is actually quite the opposite of the above when it comes to cloner motherboard of the month club builds....I've learned over the years from experience to dread calls for problem servers when the servers are cloners.
Click to expand...

This is great when it's still under warranty, but 3 or 5 years down the line, you are royally screwed if something goes wrong. Most companies want to save money and wont bother renewing the contract if it's even an option.

At home though, I've had the same server for about 3-4 years, and I can still buy parts for it, such as fans, hard drives and so on. In fact when I built it I made sure I could expand, there is room for 4 more drives and I can just slide them right in while live and build the raid array. At the time 1TB drives were the biggest but I anticipated that they would come up with bigger drives, and sure enough they did so if I want I can slide in 4 2TB drives and make a nice raid 10 or raid 5. If it was a dell server I'd have to buy the drives from Dell and get raped up the ass and probably could only get like 500GB.

In a bigger corporate setup where they have the money and want to dish it out, then I agree with buying, if you also plan to upgrade often so keep up with the latest models and always have it under warranty.
 
Red Squirrel said:
This is great when it's still under warranty, but 3 or 5 years down the line, you are royally screwed if something goes wrong. Most companies want to save money and wont bother renewing the contract if it's even an option.

At home though, I've had the same server for about 3-4 years, and I can still buy parts for it, such as fans, hard drives and so on. In fact when I built it I made sure I could expand, there is room for 4 more drives and I can just slide them right in while live and build the raid array. At the time 1TB drives were the biggest but I anticipated that they would come up with bigger drives, and sure enough they did so if I want I can slide in 4 2TB drives and make a nice raid 10 or raid 5. If it was a dell server I'd have to buy the drives from Dell and get raped up the ass and probably could only get like 500GB.

In a bigger corporate setup where they have the money and want to dish it out, then I agree with buying, if you also plan to upgrade often so keep up with the latest models and always have it under warranty.
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Really? I've found that 3-5 years down the line, there are plenty of peices of used teir-1 equipment flooding the marketplace that can be obtained very cheaply for use as hardware spares.. Ebay is flooded with 3-5 year old servers from all teir-1 manufacturers... There are also resellers who specialize in buying off-lease equipment and then selling it or parting it out for spares..

Also, there are plenty of third party support companies that specialize in carrying teir 1 server hardware for providing post warranty hardware replacement/support. where I work, we pay a monthly fee to just such a company who provides 4 hour part delivery for our multiple locations (in the US and Canada) for our servers that are over 3 years old.... It's cheaper than extending the warranty through the manufacturer.

Hence, I'd say that teir-1 equipment is usually much easier to find 3-5 years later. Yes, it may be used in some cases, but it works and it gets you back up and running quickly! and with the right planning there's not much worry or fretting about locating parts either
 
I don't know why 2U is required. Go with a Poweredge R210. Idles at 40W max load is 110W with the average configuration according to Dell. Plenty of power for any phone systems your running, and low power draw.
 
C7J0yc3 said:
I don't know why 2U is required. Go with a Poweredge R210. Idles at 40W max load is 110W with the average configuration according to Dell. Plenty of power for any phone systems your running, and low power draw.
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I'd generally agree. But I need room for the fxo and fxs cards for possible "future expansion".
 
dmolter said:
For my servers at home, I build my own...
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Yup, same here. If they go down, boo hooo. I have the file server with 6x 1.5tb atm and a dual quad xeon 5345 esxi server. I spent around 2 grand a little under 3 years ago on the esxi. And more recently $1200 on the file server.

I also have another server I colo for off-site backups and games. I built it in august 2009, a 1u super micro case and supermicro mobo with 8gb ram, dual 5405 xeons, and 2 1tb drives for $1000. (Hilariously looking back, I had a total of 4 of those 1tb hdd's fail on me in about 3 months, And that's what ended my relationship with seagate. The Samsung's that replace the seagates have been solid.)

But that's the risk I took saving thousands, and it doesn't hurt to be down a day because it isn't mission critical (although I would have preferred NOT to have hdd failures every few weeks.)

The thing that sparked this whole discussion is the fact I wanted a nice atom system, and Dell/HP didn't make one.

C7J03yc3, thanks for the tip on the r210. Nice find, it may be my new rackmount for people that don't want so much room for "expansion".
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
That's the thing when you buy from Tier-1...you dont have to go find proprietary parts..you let warranty overnight (or sooner) them to you with as little as 1 phone call. And you can rest assured that spare parts are stocked and available for quite a period of time. For me, that means the least amount of time spent on the phone, no cost, knowing I'll have that part tomorrow.

My experience is actually quite the opposite of the above when it comes to cloner motherboard of the month club builds....I've learned over the years from experience to dread calls for problem servers when the servers are cloners.
Click to expand...

QFT
 
What direct hardware are you using that you cant run Asteriks in a VM? Analogue adapters?

i have Elastix http://www.elastix.org/ set up in a VM for testing and it works fine, but i also don't use any add-on cards for analogue lines or anything..

For me it is usually build because being in Costa Rica support doesn't exist, or would take some time to get down, or dell Costa Rica doesn't offer the servers i want or the prices are ridiculous compared to dell.com, which i have had ship down servers if i need one.

all of our big servers are built by me and have worked great, i do a crap load of research before i buy anything, check for problems, bugs , compatibilities et cetera, but we are also small enough that say if a MySQL database server goes down, i know i could run it from one of the other servers with out any performance loss, as we are growing, i am looking into bought solutions.
 
I am well aware of how well Elastix runs in a VM environment, I haven't hit one instance yet (beyond my house) where I didn't need an analog card for backup purposes.

Yes, I need hardware access for the analog cards. And no, I won't be using network fxo gateways with Elastix.

SipX on the other hand, is designed to be distributed and works excellent with audiocodes network gateways. If I didn't love these Aastra xml scripts so much (the clients love them too), I would have gone SipX/Polycom a year ago.
 
StarTrek4U said:
If it's for a business, buy. If you're playing around with stuff and learning, build.
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I agree with this 100%. However if your a techie, that likes to play and has money to spend, buy it, if your a techie and need to save money etc etc limited funds, build :)
 
I thought I'd jump in here...

Just before christmas I bought mysef one of these:
http://www.tranquilpc-shop.co.uk/acatalog/BAREBONE_SERVER_Series_2.html

I has 5 western digital green 1TB drives in it(1 system drive, 4 in a RAID10 setup), running Ubuntu server 9. His name is Smee, he hosts HTTP and FTP (harrrr, rhyme).

I'm quite happy with the performance I got out of the little box, its not the fastest, but the web page loads smoothly, considering its on a home connection, and my girlfriend who was at first skeptical is now converted and loves it as much as I. FTP, SSH, Web, NFS...

I can highly recommend the box, though shipping from england to the US would probably be no longer worth it. (for me it only cost an extra 15 pounds aka 25 euros aka 45 bucks, ish).

Power draw when I try and max it out(including the harddrives) is 45W, as measured from the walljack with a power meter.

That said I'm considering building myself an Opteron based ESXi plaything, but I'd have to convince the girlfriend of the power costs. Are there are small form factor and/or especially power saving options out there?
 
Canadian in Berlin said:
That said I'm considering building myself an Opteron based ESXi plaything, but I'd have to convince the girlfriend of the power costs. Are there are small form factor and/or especially power saving options out there?
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Are you that worried about power issue ? Do you live in a place that power is so expensive ?
 
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