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I've been asked to purchase a server
elwebmaster
Member
in Help
Hi guys, I would like to get your opinion on this. I was asked by my boss to help him find a server. He is looking to get something with as much RAM as possible and he needs to be able to store up to 10TB of data in a redundant way. His budget is about 10K USD. He expects it to have warranty (i.e. used is not an option). Do you have any suggestions?
I see a lot of Dell/HP servers on Amazon with 128GB+ RAM but the disks are all small, is it normal practice to buy the server without disks and install the disks yourself? What kind of disks should I be looking at for 10TB?
Btw. this will be on premise.
Comments
For $10k why not try and get an actual brand-new Dell/HP/IBM server rather than buying something from eBay?
I am looking for a brand-new Dell/HP/IBM. I would like to get some opinions on what's best given he mostly cares about RAM and HDD (10TB, redundant). I have been playing with the Dell configurator for a PowerEdge R620 for example. It appears the chassis supports up to 10 HDDs and the largest ones they have are 1.2TB . I am guessing I should probably be looking for some iSCSI solution...
Dell / HP generally do not sell larger disks, and charge a lot when they do. I will recommend that you buy the server with 1-2 small disks on which to install the OS and then buy the data disks from elsewhere. Also, contact the sales team at Dell/HP - they will offer you a discount and may offer options which are not available on their website. If you don't need the latest processor, then you can go with a server which is one or two generations older to save a lot of money. We have multiple HP ProLiant 380p servers with 12x4TB disks and they have worked well for us.
With that budget you can get something pretty good.
Normal server is harder to do 10TB with RAID unless you're doing with SATA.
Maybe you can get a DL380 with 24 x 900GB 10K SAS and RAID 10 then you should be able to get around 10TB.
You might be better off buying storage instead of server, what is the general purpose for the server you're looking for?
Dell / HP are always going to be unreasonably expensive. Get someone to build you a server with supermicro parts.
Yes they are expensive but their support are exceptional, though I am not saying anything bad about supermicro as I had 0 experience with their support.
HP sales staff are great, I think most servers have 3 year warrenty.
Supermicro servers are da bomb
+1 supermicro servers
Choose servers with 3.5" drives for 4TB drives from dell, here's an example with;
Dual Xeon
4x 16GB RDIMM
6x 4TB HDD
H/W RAID 6 (~16TB usable, 2x 4TB used for protection/parity)
$6600 list price.
http://d.pr/i/13OpC/4vKP5Jm5
p.s. we use supermicro, but Dell is what you need to cover yourself (e.g. buying for your boss and need on-site warranty, etc).
@Incero said:
Wow great find, thanks! Yeah, the warranty part is what worries me about supermicro.
Please note, HP and other vendors have a HDD/SSD lock for only their own drives at the backplane and the raid controller. Other discs may not work or can lead problems like maximum FANs..They also do not do any kind of support if the server have installed any non vendor components.
If you buy a HP/Dell server, buy all components from HP if you do not want problems. We using only HP servers for enterprise brands and we like it, nice support, nice hardware.
There are a few more mundane, yet important things to consider
I've seen the hardware cost be approx 50% of the overall budget for a server not including the cost of the SysOp (you).
I'd recommend doing this with a Project Manager hat on, just to, "Cover your assets." :^)
C.U.tech
Check Dell and HP, both have good warranty and service, and both are ready to offer discounts on custom configurations. Supermicro is another great choice if you really need to save money and you can live with less support options.
The current Dell small business general purpose server is the T320. It can be easily configured to suit your requirements, but it becomes expensive when fitted with more than 96 Gb Ram. The next step with more RAM and 3.5'' slots is the R720xd. HP has a roughly equivalent server lineup. My first choice is Dell: the remote control option is easy to use, and free driver downloads for out-of-warranty systems are always available. If you want the manifacturer warranty, you should buy the disks with the server.