I'm just going over costs--and I know many of you use whitebox servers (whether you bought them or built them) and co-locates them. Would you care to enlighten me as to why--it's seems like such a waste of space.

kwes43,

It would really depend on your definition of "white box". My definition of "white box" is any server that is not brand name (i.e. dell, IBM, sun etc.). It has nothing to do with the chassis type (i.e. rack mount vs. regular pc chassis).

And even a tower chassis is not always a waste. The Planet (for example) changes the same thing for 1-4U chassis as a tower. Since towers are usually much cheaper, I'd go with that chassis at that location.

Frank

Originally posted by ffeingol
kwes43,

It would really depend on your definition of "white box". My definition of "white box" is any server that is not brand name (i.e. dell, IBM, sun etc.). It has nothing to do with the chassis type (i.e. rack mount vs. regular pc chassis).

And even a tower chassis is not always a waste. The Planet (for example) changes the same thing for 1-4U chassis as a tower. Since towers are usually much cheaper, I'd go with that chassis at that location.

Frank


Ok but that's 4 1u servers that you could have for the same monthly fee as the one tower--I still don't understand why you would go with one tower over 4 1us or even 2 2us:confused:

kwes43,

Like I said, it depends on the location. The Planet (for example) changes the same thing to coloc a 1U, 2U, 3U, 4U or a tower. Since I can get a tower chassis server much cheaper than any rack mounted box it's more cost effective to me to use a tower at that data center.

Frank

Heat.

There are major problems with heat in boxes that are in 1U form cases - especially when you're dealing with multiple cpu architectures.

Now, if you have one server, that's one story. Put 42 of them in a rack and see what you get. When I walk behind the colo racks here heat is just belching out of the 1U racks and I don't get to feel the heat from the sealed cabinets (which, for the record, I would never put my 1U in a sealed cabinet).

Take a look at the rackshack pictures - if a 1U was more cost-effective their DC's would be full of 1U units.

Also, if you want 4 hard drives and dual cpu's in the chassis you probably aren't going to be able to do that with a 1U form factor - now you're up to 2 U's and I wouldn't recommend putting all that heat into a case that small anyway. Expandability becomes an issue once you start to get up into the higher-end boxes.

Ok, so are towers better than racks? What do most of the big boys use?

kwes43,

You are looking for absolutes and I don't think there are any. It really depends on the situation. We have a lot of Dual P3's with 1 or 2 HD's and they work fine in a 1U chassis. OTOH, it's a really nice SuperMicro chassis with lots of cooling capacity.

It's a trade off for the extra expense of the rack mount chassis vs recurring monthly expense of the extra U's vs. the flexability of the various chassis.

Frank

Look at RackShack.... white boxes for two reasons, unless I'm mistaken...

1) They're cheaper....and at 1000's of servers, it starts to add up

2) Heat, lots of heat, mammoth amounts of heat. Again, at 1000's of servers, it starts to add up

if you're looking at white boxes from a small scale perspective than you'd be crazy to fill your Cabinet with a lot of 4U boxes.

when you look at it from a large scale prospective:

5,000 x $500-700 whiteboxes < 5,000 x $1,000-2,000 1U boxes by a couple of million dollars.

Sure it takes up more space, but when you own the facility the cost of space is already a sunk cost and you should have plenty of it to go around anyway.

Dell has no problem fitting 3 146gig scsi drives and dual p3s into a 1U form factor.


There are 1u systems comparable to rackshack's whiteboxes in terms of price and performance, but i would guess RS gets a awesome deal on those boxes thus they have alot of them.

I however would stick strictly with 1us and think tower chassis's are best under your desk, even in an outfit like rackshack. If that was me, I know a few vendors I could use that would make comparable systems in 1u.

Cost is the only reason I can see, cooling isn't an issue, a 1U can be cooled as well as a mini-tower, Supermicro prove that very well.

5,000 x $700 whiteboxes < 5,000 x $1,000

It's less for purchase cost (I took the higher whitebox figure as there is not likely to be $500 difference just for a case).

What that figure doesn't take in to account is that in the space of 3 mini-tower cases, I can fit 9-10 1U servers. So lets look at it this way:

Monthly:

3 * $150 = $450 (Whiteboxes)
9 * $150 = $1350 (1U)

Diff: $900 per month.

So as you can see, 6 more servers in the same amount of space, sounds good to me, especially when you factor in how much you have to pay Per U of rack space each month (Or how much it has cost you per U to build your DC). So in my books, using whiteboxes is a short sited way of doing things, saves in the short term, but in the long run it'll cost more.

Also look at build time as a factor to do quality builds with tidy cabling taking into account air flow and the such.

I can build about 20 tower systems a day, compared to about 4/5 1U rack mounts.

Also, when you look at rack shack, they probably buy in their cases in batches of 500 now so probably get them at ridiculously cheap (I know in the UK when we buy in batches of 50) we get them at £14 a case or something like that.. so just think what they get them at!

Compare that price to a GOOD 1U chasis which comes in at minimum of around £150

Originally posted by KDAWebServices
Cost is the only reason I can see, cooling isn't an issue, a 1U can be cooled as well as a mini-tower, Supermicro prove that very well.

5,000 x $700 whiteboxes < 5,000 x $1,000

It's less for purchase cost (I took the higher whitebox figure as there is not likely to be $500 difference just for a case).

What that figure doesn't take in to account is that in the space of 3 mini-tower cases, I can fit 9-10 1U servers. So lets look at it this way:

Monthly:

3 * $150 = $450 (Whiteboxes)
9 * $150 = $1350 (1U)

Diff: $900 per month.

So as you can see, 6 more servers in the same amount of space, sounds good to me, especially when you factor in how much you have to pay Per U of rack space each month (Or how much it has cost you per U to build your DC). So in my books, using whiteboxes is a short sited way of doing things, saves in the short term, but in the long run it'll cost more.

These were my thoughts exactly.

That proves my point on whiteboxes, you can build them sloppy and not have to worry. £14 cases? Bet they've got tin-foil PSUs :)

Cost is the only reason I can see, cooling isn't an issue, a 1U can be cooled as well as a mini-tower, Supermicro prove that very well.

Like I said above - a single 1U chassis computer is one thing....stack 42 of them up and you have something else going on. We've got fans that cause a tornado in our 1U cases but when the boxes at the top of the rack are sucking in all the hot air from the boxes below, adding more fans doesn't help. Even the forced-air cases aren't that great because it's hard to force enough cooling air through 50-100 cabinets without each one being on it's own hvac.

Cost is a factor, granted - the tower cases are way cheaper on the whole. I've never seen a tower that cheap but I wouldn't be surprised if you can get them.

Note: Price may have been a bit exageratted to make the point of the price difference between towers and rackmount :P

Altho I'm sure if you were buying 1000+ cases at once you would get an amazing price!

White boxes are easier to locate than black boxes in a dark NOC

Just kidding :P


Ok, so are towers better than racks? What do most of the big boys use?


I see much more racked servers than towers in data centers. Personnaly I haven't seen data center charging more for hosting towers than racked, but I must admit I never been in contacts with guys from the large data centers.

Racked or tower is a question of choice. Towers are much less expensive and I find them more flexible (change characteristics at any time, add RAM easily, etc), but racked are possibly more performant, more easily ventilated, and might come with better service from the vendor (those are my thinking, I don't know much about it).

Originally posted by kwes43
Ok but that's 4 1u servers that you could have for the same monthly fee as the one tower--I still don't understand why you would go with one tower over 4 1us or even 2 2us:confused:

ThePlanet gives UP to 4u of space for ONE server. They don't allow you to colocate more than one server in the space without paying for another power and network drop.