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Thread: rack server builders? best one?
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01-04-2008, 10:45 AM #26Web Hosting Master
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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
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01-04-2008, 02:49 PM #27Web Hosting Master
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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.
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01-04-2008, 03:15 PM #28THE Web Hosting Master
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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
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01-04-2008, 03:33 PM #29Randy
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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.
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01-04-2008, 03:45 PM #30THE Web Hosting Master
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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
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01-04-2008, 03:47 PM #31Web Hosting Master
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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.
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01-04-2008, 03:48 PM #32THE Web Hosting Master
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Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
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01-04-2008, 03:50 PM #33THE Web Hosting Master
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Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
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karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
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01-04-2008, 03:54 PM #34THE Web Hosting Master
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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
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karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
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01-04-2008, 04:00 PM #35Junior Guru
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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.
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01-04-2008, 04:21 PM #36THE Web Hosting Master
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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
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01-04-2008, 05:37 PM #37Web Hosting Master
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01-04-2008, 05:48 PM #38Junior Guru
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01-04-2008, 05:53 PM #39Junior Guru
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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.
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01-04-2008, 06:31 PM #40THE Web Hosting Master
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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
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karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
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01-04-2008, 06:34 PM #41Junior Guru
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01-04-2008, 07:06 PM #42Randy
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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.
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01-04-2008, 07:07 PM #43Backup Guru
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01-04-2008, 07:55 PM #44WHT Addict
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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).
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01-04-2008, 10:56 PM #45Web Hosting Master
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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
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01-04-2008, 11:21 PM #46Disabled
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01-05-2008, 12:15 AM #47Living in the Virtual World
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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
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01-05-2008, 12:39 AM #48Web Hosting Master
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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
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01-05-2008, 12:59 AM #49WHT Addict
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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.
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01-05-2008, 02:51 AM #50Junior Guru
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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
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