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  1. #26
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    ApaqDigital.

    I own tons of them and see 100s of his servers everyday. I own some Dells and HPs. Neither is as good as the servers that apaq builds. I can afford to buy pretty much any server I want. For all our own use servers we only use apaq.

    I've never worked with any vendor who has the integrity, knowledge and quality of work that apaq has.
    SiteSouth
    Atlanta, GA and Las Vegas, NV. Colocation

  2. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by FastServ View Post
    So the big 3 will run my applications better and give better uptime/reliability, ect? Qualify that one...=)
    The overall experience will be far greater, with a great TCO. I've got 2 hour support on a couple of my storage servers, and the one problem I had with them, I had a tech out with a replacement power supply an hour and a half later.

    Beyond that, all of the larger manufacturers have been investing hundreds of millions of dollars into power efficiency over the past few years. I just can't fathom the idea of running mission critical servers with cheap boxes whose components were more determined by current market pricing conditions than by the r&d from a good engineering department.

  3. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by sly596 View Post
    Amadi Systems can beat this?!:

    Dual Quad Core E5420 Xeon's 2.5 GHz 1333FSB 2x6MB Cache
    8GB 4x2GB RAM w/ room for 4 more chips
    3 146GB 15k RPM Raid-5 w/ room for 3 more drives

    This can be had for $2900 at Dell w/ 3 years on site support. I find it hard to beat. Can it be beaten?! Say it isn't so?
    From the recent quotes I've gotten, it would be roughly the same price, and there are no specials and/or one-time pricing with that. If I ordered the same box in a month the price wouldn't be significantly higher because the special ran out.

    Also, where did you get that price? I price that out on Dell's site now and it is $4300 to get that system, with rails. There is no free or discounted processor upgrades on the 5400 series, just 5300 series processors from what I can tell.
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
    VMware Virtual Data Center Platform

    karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
    Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation

  4. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by mhalligan View Post
    The overall experience will be far greater, with a great TCO. I've got 2 hour support on a couple of my storage servers, and the one problem I had with them, I had a tech out with a replacement power supply an hour and a half later.
    1.5 hours is great...but 1.5 hours is alot of downtime. Hardware is cheap, hardware fails...doesn't matter the make and brand. Manytimes with Dell, you really don't know who actually manufactured the motherboard.

    A hot standby or on-site spare parts, ready to take over beats a Dell "gold" support plan anyday, both in cost and downtime. Basing a business plan on a "Gold" support plan will eventually lead to desaster when they have to ship your part or otherwise exceed the 4 hour SLA.

    To add further, we've seen lower failure rates on SM hardware than Dell.
    Last edited by FastServ; 01-04-2008 at 03:36 PM.
    Fast Serv Networks, LLC | AS29889 | DDOS Protected | Managed Cloud, Streaming, Dedicated Servers, Colo by-the-U
    Since 2003 - Ashburn VA + San Diego CA Datacenters

  5. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by mhalligan View Post
    Comparing with Dell is like comparing a $500 hooker against hooking up with your 50 year old aunt selma. Of course it's going to be better.

    Supermicro makes good commodity servers, but they're just that, a commodity, whitebox manufacturer. Compared to something from HP, Sun, or IBM they're weak, especially on the on-board diagnostics, and management side.

    For dedicated servers where you don't need much (any) sophistication, sure Supermicro is fine, but for more intensive applications, give the big 3 a chance, they'll surprise you. Looking inside some Sun servers is like peering into a work of art. I'm especially fond of Sun's latest round of LOMs, which have embedded Linux in them.. It's lightyears ahead of Supermicro's IPMI implementation.
    I agree, Sun is better, but from what I can tell, the cost is significantly more as well (A dual dual-core Opteron on Sun's site is more than twice what I pay currently for a system with the same specs), but I do not see how Dell is clearly better than Supermicro, as you say.

    What does Dell offer that Supermicro doesn't? Supermicro's IPMI offers the same functionality as Dell's DRAC cards. Then the Supermicro systems give you much greater flexibility, higher power efficiency, and equivalent, if not higher, reliability.
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
    VMware Virtual Data Center Platform

    karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
    Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation

  6. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by FastServ View Post
    1.5 hours is great...but 1.5 hours is alot of downtime. Hardware is cheap, hardware fails...doesn't matter the make and brand. Manytimes with Dell, you really don't know who actually manufactured the motherboard.

    A hot standby or on-site spare parts, ready to take over beats a Dell "gold" support plan anyday, both in cost and downtime. Basing a business plan on a "Gold" support plan will eventually lead to desaster when they have to ship your part or otherwise exceed the 4 hour SLA.

    To add further, we've seen lower failure rates on SM hardware than Dell.
    A bit of clarification here, I consider Dell to always be the worst server option available. I'd gladly take a whitebox over Dell any day if those were the only two options. Luckily they're not, I only buy from HP, Sun, or IBM, and to be honest I haven't considered IBM seriously for 5-6 years.

    Dell's manufacturing process is one huge snafu, and I know a few engineers at Dell who wouldn't even consider running Dell for their own projects. The only thing I like Dell for are cheap LCD panels and their rackmount KVMs.

  7. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by FastServ View Post
    A hot standby or on-site spare parts, ready to take over beats a Dell "gold" support plan anyday, both in cost and downtime. Basing a business plan on a "Gold" support plan will eventually lead to desaster when they have to ship your part or otherwise exceed the 4 hour SLA.

    To add further, we've seen lower failure rates on SM hardware than Dell.
    I agree, for us, a 4 hour SLA is simply not acceptable. For the $1000+ per server for the Gold Support, you could easily stock spare parts and pay the tech the $100 to repair the issue and have it completely done in an hour or two.
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
    VMware Virtual Data Center Platform

    karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
    Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation

  8. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by mhalligan View Post
    A bit of clarification here, I consider Dell to always be the worst server option available. I'd gladly take a whitebox over Dell any day if those were the only two options. Luckily they're not, I only buy from HP, Sun, or IBM, and to be honest I haven't considered IBM seriously for 5-6 years.

    Dell's manufacturing process is one huge snafu, and I know a few engineers at Dell who wouldn't even consider running Dell for their own projects. The only thing I like Dell for are cheap LCD panels and their rackmount KVMs.
    Ummm, then explain why you said, "Comparing with Dell is like comparing a $500 hooker against hooking up with your 50 year old aunt selma. Of course it's going to be better." when comparing Dell to Supermicro? I'm sure you can see why we're confused...
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
    VMware Virtual Data Center Platform

    karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
    Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation

  9. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by mhalligan View Post
    Beyond that, all of the larger manufacturers have been investing hundreds of millions of dollars into power efficiency over the past few years. I just can't fathom the idea of running mission critical servers with cheap boxes whose components were more determined by current market pricing conditions than by the r&d from a good engineering department.
    So you're not familiar with Supermicro then? The power efficiency of the Supermicro systems we get exceeds the power efficiency of any Dell systems we have received. The biggest difference was with the 2.8Ghx Xeon Noconas we got from Dell, they used 2A easy, while the 3.0Ghz Xeon Noconas, Supermicro based, used 1.6A max when configured with the same specs.

    You're saying Supermicro boards are not well engineered and are less power efficient. Could you please back that up?
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
    VMware Virtual Data Center Platform

    karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
    Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation

  10. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by KarlZimmer View Post
    From the recent quotes I've gotten, it would be roughly the same price, and there are no specials and/or one-time pricing with that. If I ordered the same box in a month the price wouldn't be significantly higher because the special ran out.

    Also, where did you get that price? I price that out on Dell's site now and it is $4300 to get that system, with rails. There is no free or discounted processor upgrades on the 5400 series, just 5300 series processors from what I can tell.
    Make sure you're on the Small Business Site. The PE2950 you won't see the $1400 discount until you add it to your cart. Believe me the prices are phenomenal at Dell ATM. I just purchased a 2950. I think Dell has a new initiative on the 1 and 2U servers. They will probably remain competitive for a while.

  11. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by sly596 View Post
    Make sure you're on the Small Business Site. The PE2950 you won't see the $1400 discount until you add it to your cart. Believe me the prices are phenomenal at Dell ATM. I just purchased a 2950. I think Dell has a new initiative on the 1 and 2U servers. They will probably remain competitive for a while.
    OK, yep, can get it right around $2950 from what I can tell. Looks like a good deal, though the special is only on servers priced $4300+, so take out one of those SAS drives and it goes up to $3250. It is definitely a good deal now, but as I said, if you buy servers regularly, you can't be counting on getting that deal every time.

    We had purchased a bunch of Dells once, since the price was too good to pass up, free 2nd CPU, free RAM upgrade, etc. it made the price lower than we were paying for Supermicros, but that was about the biggest mistake I've ever made purchasing server hardware. Within a year and a half 20% of the drives failed, the systems used 25-35% more power than the Supermicro systems, they couldn't fit as many hard drives, they couldn't use 3rd party RAID cards (as far as I could tell with the way the backplane was setup), you could only use single rank RAM in half the RAM slots, the systems would only boot with one specific speed of RAM (when the Supermicro systems run fine if they want say DDR2 533 and you put in DDR2 667), etc...
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
    VMware Virtual Data Center Platform

    karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
    Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation

  12. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by KarlZimmer View Post
    Ummm, then explain why you said, "Comparing with Dell is like comparing a $500 hooker against hooking up with your 50 year old aunt selma. Of course it's going to be better." when comparing Dell to Supermicro? I'm sure you can see why we're confused...
    Forgive me for not being clear in my analogy. I'm recovering from a bout of food poisoning and it probably didn't make much sense. In my analogy, Dell is your 50 year old aunt selma, and any other possible server option is the $500 hooker :R)

  13. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by mhalligan View Post
    Forgive me for not being clear in my analogy. I'm recovering from a bout of food poisoning and it probably didn't make much sense. In my analogy, Dell is your 50 year old aunt selma, and any other possible server option is the $500 hooker :R)
    I strongly disagree with this statement. That Xeon 54xx chip is running at the same speed whether it's in the Dell or any other manfacturer's system. Come on now! Why such a hate towards Dell?

  14. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by KarlZimmer View Post
    OK, yep, can get it right around $2950 from what I can tell. Looks like a good deal, though the special is only on servers priced $4300+, so take out one of those SAS drives and it goes up to $3250. It is definitely a good deal now, but as I said, if you buy servers regularly, you can't be counting on getting that deal every time.

    We had purchased a bunch of Dells once, since the price was too good to pass up, free 2nd CPU, free RAM upgrade, etc. it made the price lower than we were paying for Supermicros, but that was about the biggest mistake I've ever made purchasing server hardware. Within a year and a half 20% of the drives failed, the systems used 25-35% more power than the Supermicro systems, they couldn't fit as many hard drives, they couldn't use 3rd party RAID cards (as far as I could tell with the way the backplane was setup), you could only use single rank RAM in half the RAM slots, the systems would only boot with one specific speed of RAM (when the Supermicro systems run fine if they want say DDR2 533 and you put in DDR2 667), etc...
    Karl,

    If you are purchasing servers constantly, you can get a business account with Dell, and they will even beat this price all day everyday. This system I just bought they took an additional $200 off the sale price, and threw in free next day shipping!

    As I said before, if you establish a relationship with Dell, you will be hard pressed to find better support and deals.

  15. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by sly596 View Post
    Karl,

    If you are purchasing servers constantly, you can get a business account with Dell, and they will even beat this price all day everyday. This system I just bought they took an additional $200 off the sale price, and threw in free next day shipping!

    As I said before, if you establish a relationship with Dell, you will be hard pressed to find better support and deals.
    I would need to disagree with you there as well. I had a business account with them, etc. and dealing with Dell was the absolutely worst sales experience I have ever had while purchasing servers. That was using Dell leasing as well, but that was so terrible we used a 3rd party leasing company, which still caused confusion at Dell... They were also requiring full pre-funding, which is simply not possible with most leasing companies.
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
    VMware Virtual Data Center Platform

    karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
    Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation

  16. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by KarlZimmer View Post
    I would need to disagree with you there as well. I had a business account with them, etc. and dealing with Dell was the absolutely worst sales experience I have ever had while purchasing servers. That was using Dell leasing as well, but that was so terrible we used a 3rd party leasing company, which still caused confusion at Dell...
    Interesting, I've had a completely different experience, but I can't say that I've leased from Dell. I just buy straight up.

  17. #42
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    Another thing I need to mention...

    I would hardly consider SM barebones systems and "white box" in the same sentence.

    The motherboards and the chassis, including the air flow, are all designed as a package, just like the "big names", except without all the proprietary crap like Karl mentioned.

    By definition white box would be a generic case with some random motherboard inside...SM products are far, very far from that. Anyone who thinks otherwise, I'll just assume there is not much experience with SM products...either that or blatant "server snobbery".
    Last edited by FastServ; 01-04-2008 at 07:11 PM.
    Fast Serv Networks, LLC | AS29889 | DDOS Protected | Managed Cloud, Streaming, Dedicated Servers, Colo by-the-U
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  18. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by sly596 View Post
    I strongly disagree with this statement. That Xeon 54xx chip is running at the same speed whether it's in the Dell or any other manfacturer's system. Come on now! Why such a hate towards Dell?
    If you read the rest of the thread, you'll see several reasons why many experienced people avoid Dell, and it has nothing to do with speed.
    Scott Burns, President
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  19. #44
    I too use Supermicro based systems, and have 100% satisfaction dealing with Silicon Mechanics. Burn-in time has been about 5-7 business days, and then ground shipping from them to me on site has only taken 3 days. All systems purchased to date haven't had problems with the components or chassis. *knocks on head*. Their online quote form is quite awesome imho, as while you build out your desired system for a quote, it also tells you how many amps it will consume (at least on 2U or larger systems I see this feature, not 100% of the 1U systems though).

  20. #45
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    Anyone who buys a Dell box with an onsite support SLA and actually thinks they're going to get that support, onsite, within the time specified every time they have a problem is living in fantasyland. I've heard quite a few stories of being told the required part wasn't on hand, so no Dell tech would be making the trip. We use Supermicro boxes and keep the spares we need on hand. That way, if a part fails, a NOC monkey can swap it out in a matter of minutes. If they're tied up, one of our guys will drive down. I like being in control of my own destiny

  21. #46
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    We use www.GOCPN.com since it isnt too expenses compared to others

  22. #47
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    We have recently started using www.rackmountspecialists.com. I actually put in another quote request a few minutes ago and got a reply from a real person in less than a minute.

    I am very happy with their hardware and level of service. They are very dedicated people and their prices are unbeatable. I have servers from them running almost a year without a reboot, hardware issue, or anything else - runs fantastically.
    » VPSFuze.com - Performance should be noticeable - VPS Hosting at its best.
    » HostingFuze.com - Affordable & Reliable Shared & Master Reseller hosting services

  23. #48
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    I got these two quotes:

    APAQ

    Core2 Duo E4500, 2x 2.0G cores, 2M L2
    Foxconn 946GZ7MA socket 775 desktop board
    1x Kingston 1G DDR2-667, 1x open
    2x Western Digital 160-Gig SATA-II, 7200rpm
    on-board Marvell Gb NIC
    24x slim CD, no floppy
    supermicro 1U SC811T-260B chassis
    2x hot-swap SATA bays
    supermicro 1U 260-watt power supply
    supermicro 1U rail kit
    UPS ground/insurance
    ==========
    $670


    Rackmount Specialist

    1 Intel Core 2 Duo E4300
    1 Intel D946GZIS Mainboard
    1 1GB DDR2-667 DIMM RAM
    2 80GB WD SATA2 Hard Disk
    1 1U R9131 Chassis
    1 Rail Kit for R913x Chassis
    1 18x DVD-RW Optical Drive
    1 1U Passive HS + Air Guide

    $590


    My question is, do any motherboards have some kind of remote reboot/access console, kind of like what Dell's DRAC's purpose is?

    Also, how do I know if memory is ECC if it doesn't get listed as ECC in the quote? lol

  24. #49
    99% of the time a C2D isn't going to use ECC RAM. That is only used in server boards, which generally support Xeon procs.

    You could get an IP KVM card like the peppercon eric II or if you get a supermicro board you can get the IPMI card.
    Derek Raines
    Gigenet Communications - Chicago, IL

  25. #50
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    A lot of the Supermicro boards for socket 775 processors suggest you need ECC memory. This is generally not required and you can use non ECC memory.

    Supermicro has something that is very much like the Dell DRAC Cards. Although not all of the Supermicro IPMI stuff works the best, there are newer versions that have work great for us. A good board that supports Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Xeon 3200/3000 series processors, and the ipmi cards we have been using from supermicro is the Supermicro PDSME+. With my experience it has also been a lot better to use the IPMI cards with dedicated network ports.
    Curt Royer - Amadi Systems
    curt@amadisystems.com - http://amadisystems.com

    Rackmount Solutions | Storage Arrays | Networking & Accessories

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