Server hardware is a ripoff

[BoberFett]

So I'm buying a server for my job and I was going to get a real server, with real server hardware, with a real server OS, and real server ram, and a real server pair of SSD, and then I saw the price and it gave me a real severe headache.
I'm buying a god damn gaming PC and using that. Screw this expensive crap.

A gaming PC for a server for your company. That's a good choice.

 

[TheSlamma]

If a Gaming PC is able to do what you need it to do then you didn't need a "real" server to begin with.

 

[TheSlamma]

A gaming PC for a server for your company. That's a good choice.

Maybe it's the back end for Home Depots credit card system

 

[dougp]

If a Gaming PC is able to do what you need it to do then you didn't need a "real" server to begin with.

This. And anyone who recommends something besides a server with actual support isn't realistic about growth and/or need.

 

[Brovane]

So I'm buying a server for my job and I was going to get a real server, with real server hardware, with a real server OS, and real server ram, and a real server pair of SSD, and then I saw the price and it gave me a real severe headache.
I'm buying a god damn gaming PC and using that. Screw this expensive crap.

 

[Grooveriding]

I would install a Wii to handle this task.

 

[rudeguy]

This. And anyone who recommends something besides a server with actual support isn't realistic about growth and/or need.

Our company ran on repurposed servers for a very long time. The server room used to have one rack with a few servers but then 4 or 5 boxes scattered around the place handling random tasks. It was only recently that we finally pulled all of those and did it the right way.

I was hoping the OP would provide some more details for us. My first instinct is to tell him to look at some used stuff but he's not telling us what he needs. Maybe he's just looking to run a massive bit torrent porn stash?

 

[moonbogg]

lol you guys are funny. I priced out a simple i5 box, onboard video with a 1tb 850evo. Simple. It will be fine. They wanted a raid 1 setup, but I think a single SSD will be fine. Relax, we got Carbonite bitmches.

 

[dougp]

lol you guys are funny. I priced out a simple i5 box, onboard video with a 1tb 850evo. Simple. It will be fine. They wanted a raid 1 setup, but I think a single SSD will be fine. Relax, we got Carbonite bitmches.

No, most of us giving you the advice are actual IT professionals who've had to clean up the mess of people who think a basic PC should be used in an instance like this.

 

[ultimatebob]

lol you guys are funny. I priced out a simple i5 box, onboard video with a 1tb 850evo. Simple. It will be fine. They wanted a raid 1 setup, but I think a single SSD will be fine. Relax, we got Carbonite bitmches.

Just for haha's, try doing a full restore of your data to a different directory using that Carbonite account and let us know how long that takes.

There is a reason why the guy in the commercials has time to get a haircut, go go karting, and catch Lobsters among other various manly things.

 

[moonbogg]

No, most of us giving you the advice are actual IT professionals who've had to clean up the mess of people who think a basic PC should be used in an instance like this.

A basic Pentium 4 rig has been working for the past 5 years at least. No issues. Well, sometimes the files go blank on the server but they usually come back up. Its just a glitch or something but it does work though. This will be much better.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Good luck.

 

[Brovane]

lol you guys are funny. I priced out a simple i5 box, onboard video with a 1tb 850evo. Simple. It will be fine. They wanted a raid 1 setup, but I think a single SSD will be fine. Relax, we got Carbonite bitmches.

What is the funny part is that working in a larger environment Server's become just commodity building blocks. I just got a quote for a new Dell M620 Blade server that will do everything the App-Dev person needs for about $2700. Glad to see you got backup covered, Carbonite rocks. The important thing is that everyone understands what the recovery time is using commodity hardware like you are using.

 

[Ns1]

lol you guys are funny. I priced out a simple i5 box, onboard video with a 1tb 850evo. Simple. It will be fine. They wanted a raid 1 setup, but I think a single SSD will be fine. Relax, we got Carbonite bitmches.

"redundancy? This is our production server, we don't need that shit"

 

[dave_the_nerd]

There are a lot of things wrong with that picture, but:

1) I see an out of band access modem.
2) That's a rack mountable server, which probably has ECC RAM, etc.
3) The black box looks like a UPS.

Just saying; could be worse.

 

[jlee]

lol. You might get lucky and be good for a while.

I guess if you're not losing any money when your "server" goes down, it doesn't matter. When our customers' stuff drops, banks go offline. Soooo, redundant is good.

 

[Brovane]

A basic Pentium 4 rig has been working for the past 5 years at least. No issues. Well, sometimes the files go blank on the server but they usually come back up. Its just a glitch or something but it does work though. This will be much better.

We have a Dell 1655 Blade from 2003 that is still up and running just fine. :thumbsup:

 

[dougp]

A basic Pentium 4 rig has been working for the past 5 years at least. No issues. Well, sometimes the files go blank on the server but they usually come back up. Its just a glitch or something but it does work though. This will be much better.

Then I hope you don't have a hardware failure, like perhaps the CPU crapping out or bad DIMMs. How long can you be without your fileserver? What about when a hard drive goes out? Are you at least installing hot-swap bays? What's the RMA on a HDD? Do you have a cold spare?

Look, I'm not saying to pay for some crazy server, but getting a regular tower server @ Dell w/ ProSupport is a much better investment.

 

[rudeguy]

Just for haha's, try doing a full restore of your data to a different directory using that Carbonite account and let us know how long that takes.

There is a reason why the guy in the commercials has time to get a haircut, go go karting, and catch Lobsters among other various manly things.

Glad I'm not the only one who caught that!

When I worked for the cable co, we rolled out an online backup option. It had unlimited storage and really wasn't a bad deal...except that they made us pitch it hard to every single person we talked to. Well some photographer guy called in having problems. It seems his drive had been backing up for over 3 days and wasn't anywhere close to being done. Turns out he had hundreds of gigs of pics he was backing up. His upload speed was somewhere around 1Mb, so he was looking at somewhere around 700 hours before everythign would be backed up. And that was if he didn't do anything else!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Glad I'm not the only one who caught that!

When I worked for the cable co, we rolled out an online backup option. It had unlimited storage and really wasn't a bad deal...except that they made us pitch it hard to every single person we talked to. Well some photographer guy called in having problems. It seems his drive had been backing up for over 3 days and wasn't anywhere close to being done. Turns out he had hundreds of gigs of pics he was backing up. His upload speed was somewhere around 1Mb, so he was looking at somewhere around 700 hours before everythign would be backed up. And that was if he didn't do anything else!

Yeah, I had a similar experience with Crashplan, but I was expecting that.

I think it was about four months before I was up to date.

 

[moonbogg]

Just for haha's, try doing a full restore of your data to a different directory using that Carbonite account and let us know how long that takes.

There is a reason why the guy in the commercials has time to get a haircut, go go karting, and catch Lobsters among other various manly things.

Hmm...this is worth considering. Here is the sticking point though. They want an SSD based server. A real server rated SSD is very expensive. They want them in raid 1, and they want 1tb capacity, so this makes it very expensive when a basic (real) server would otherwise be very affordable. There is no point in getting server grade hardware and skimping on the SSDs, so I priced out a regular, completely skimped rig instead. Its all or nothing. No point in having a real server with a massive weak link in the form of consumer grade SSDs.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Hmm...this is worth considering. Here is the sticking point though. They want an SSD based server. A real server rated SSD is very expensive. They want them in raid 1, and they want 1tb capacity, so this makes it very expensive when a basic (real) server would otherwise be very affordable. There is no point in getting server grade hardware and skimping on the SSDs, so I priced out a regular, completely skimped rig instead. Its all or nothing. No point in having a real server with a massive weak link in the form of consumer grade SSDs.

If they want that, they need to be willing to pay for it. Having a single SSD and no easy to recover backup is a bad idea whether it's your server or your desktop.

What's their actual workload like in terms of IOPS? Most people don't use nearly as many as they think. A RAID-10 of 10k drives is probably fast enough.

 

[Ns1]

Hmm...this is worth considering. Here is the sticking point though. They want an SSD based server. A real server rated SSD is very expensive. They want them in raid 1, and they want 1tb capacity, so this makes it very expensive when a basic (real) server would otherwise be very affordable. There is no point in getting server grade hardware and skimping on the SSDs, so I priced out a regular, completely skimped rig instead. Its all or nothing. No point in having a real server with a massive weak link in the form of consumer grade SSDs.

D:

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

lol you guys are funny. I priced out a simple i5 box, onboard video with a 1tb 850evo. Simple. It will be fine. They wanted a raid 1 setup, but I think a single SSD will be fine. Relax, we got Carbonite bitmches.

Say you back it up once a week, and sometimes people forget to do it. Then at some point the SSD fails. Your latest backup is several weeks old, and you don't have a spare disk available. That means you quickly have to get a replacement from somewhere and you need to hope that people have the recent data on their local computers too still.

If you program your own software it's a pain and you may have to do a lot again in such a situation, if you work on project basis it means the project just got set back significantly and you may be losing out on money as you won't be able to make the deadline.

A NAS is a good idea if you know you can get replacement hardware for it if needed (that's a large part of a support contract, that if it breaks down you can not only get a replacement harddisk but also an identical RAID controller or so that allows you to get back up as quickly as possible). A RAID setup (not RAID 0) means that a broken harddisk doesn't immediately put you out of business, while a UPS means that there's no data loss in case of a power failure or power surge.

Also consider whether or not you expect or plan on growing as a company. If you get bigger you may want more functionality, you may want an actual fileserver, allow remote logins, have a firewall or other functions. If that may be soon then it's worthwhile to consider getting a small server of a big brand (so you know spare parts will be available for quite some time). That way you can customize it for the future, and for example also put a backup drive in it already.

 

[Carson Dyle]

And you couldn't possibly need the 24/7 on site support for a year or more that comes with most server purchases.

Most? You're talking Dell or HP or a similar vendor. Lots of server hardware comes with no such support.

Small business with one box, supported by your brother in law or the local high school kid. Probably not a lot of need for 24/7 on site support. The server goes down, you go fishing for the day.