Where to buy servers
dhamaniasad
Member
The title might be a little misleading, but I just want to know, out of utter curiosity, where all you guys buy servers, as in the hardware that can then be colocated.
I know that there are supermicro servers that most people use, but from what I understood, they come without any drives or CPU, so all I get is the rack mount(correct me if I'm using the wrong term).
I found something here, http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=SY-517CLF, but from the looks of it, the server comes without CPU, RAM, or storage, so I end up paying $310 for just the motherboard.
So where do you buy your servers from? Rack/tower/blade, anything works. As I am really clueless about this and would love to know more about it.
Also, those $500 72 GB RAM servers that people keep talking about?
Comments
Those l5520s (72GB machines) can be picked on ebay from anywhere between $300 - 1kUSD depending on the configuration.
Heres a link for one on Ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Poweredge-C1100-1U-2X-XEON-QC-L5520-2-26GHZ-NO-HDD-72GB-DDR3-Tested-/261274072295?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item3cd525f4e7
If your wondering about those really cheap dual quads ($100 - $200USD) you can look up the l5420 servers which have dual CPU's and can support different RAM variations.
They're old hardware but still very strong in terms of power.
If you're talking able rentable $500/m 72GB RAM servers, they don't get those servers for $500 itself, neither does their investment get paid in a month's billing. It takes them months to recover costs and later earn from them.
Thanks for the link, looks amazing.
Nope, I'm talking about buying the hardware, not the service.
We've also built out a few configs based on those servers, in theory what would cost the most and possible go over the initial server cost would be buying HDD's and a decent RAID controller if there isn't one included.
All the best
Well, its good to know that someone is using those servers, so I know that they are good. Can't desktop HDD's be used in these rack servers?
If you look around at some peoples H/W configs for VPS hosting then you will see plenty of people run those L5520s which have a decent resource/price ratio. Power is usage is high on them depending on the spec, but you can expect that with the older H/W.
You can use desktop HDD's depending on the caddies you hve included 3.5inch or 2.5inch drives.
So in a hypothetical situation, if I buy one of those servers, and colocate it, could I expect myself to be paying more than I would for a new server? Due to the power costs? DC's calculate power for colocation in amps AFIAK, not watts per hour.
It would really depend on the location and the power costs for it.
You can expect to be using between 1A - 2A on these servers, but it does boil down to your final build your going to be using.
You'd be looking at around $100 in colocation costs give or take a few bucks, i've seen some really good deals about WHT for colocation in Jacksonville where quite a few people are running the same machines.
Your best bet would be to browse about and see what people will offer you for colocating one of those servers they're the 1U server and the 2u (8bay) versions so you'd need to know whcih one your going for before getting any real quotes.
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How about this http://joesdatacenter.com/kansas-city-colocation-server-hosting-packages? Or this https://www.datashack.net/colocation/? Wouldn't they allow that server to be colocated under their 1U plans?
There pretty much the same company anyhow :P Give them a message they should be able to fit your needs.
I know @SkylarM from Crissic was posting some offers in Jacksonville he may be able to help you also.
I was just enquiring to increase my knowledge, don't plan on buying or colocating right now. Seems rather nice. If you can get this server for $400, then I wonder why people buy dedicated servers for 100's of dollars per month rather than colocate? Is it due to the upfront investment, or something else?
Some people just don't want to be responsible for hardware replacement.
volumedrive offers colo for $19.95 per month. I can buy a cheap rack server, that could still have more resources than say 4 GB ram and a Xeon, for maybe around $150. The upfront cost is a problem, but I guess in the long run, it pays off. Do servers require replacement parts often?
So it'd be much better to just get a dedicated server if I don't need quantity.
Don't most VPS providers colocate?
Seems pretty plausible.
I doubt many people would want to send stuff to VD after the latest fiasco.
Why, what happened? Are they not reputable/trustworthy?
If you wanted to look at much cheaper options as said take a peak at the l5420s:
2 x L5420 QUAD CORE 16GB RAM:for $150
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-PROLIANT-SE1101-2-x-L5420-QUAD-CORE-16GB-HDD-TRAYS-RAILS-LIKE-DELL-CS24-SC-/121193400356?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item1c37b08824Theres plenty of different configs, some with HDD's some not but overall there bloody cheap!
As Patrick @Iniz said,I wouldn't be trusting Volumdrive with your hardware.
If you're going to be running a service, it's best to utilize commercial grade hdds, but for your own use, consumer grade should work fine. Google did a study a few years back that found very similar failure rates between commercial and consumer grade hdds, but again, it you are charging money for a service, probably should use commercial grade hdds.
The other thing to look at when colocating old hardware is the power requirements, I have a dual L5639, 72GB Dell Poweredge CS24-TY that I can't find a reasonable home for because it needs 2Amps of power. While it is a fantastic server, it will cost me more to colocate at a low cost facility than it cost to rent an E3-1245 with 8GB or RAM. But I have a dual L5430 with 8GB RAM that I am able to colocate for $35.
Power on the Dual L5520's/Dual L5639's are roughly 1.5A with a 4 drive ~36GB ram configuration. Depending on config you can typically build out a Dual L5520 with an okay HW raid card and 4 1tb drives for about ~$800 total.
Colo rates on individual servers aren't typically worth it unless you can find a reseller that works specifically in individual server colocation. Most datacenters tend to offer better deals on large colo arrangements, starting from a full cab on up. Power can also typically be negotiated to some extent when you're talking large volume. They won't typically budge on small single-server arrangements.
Depending on the datacenter, colocating can get quite expensive if you're talking swapping things out, upgrading, etc. You also become responsible for HW replacements in the event of failure, and for smaller colo arrangements you may have to pay for the space if you ship in extra parts. Most DC's do server racking/installs free, hotswaps free, but will charge hands-on fees for some things such as chronic issues, configuration, other swaps like RAM, etc.
If you DO end up colocating, I'd try and find a reseller that offers more personalized support and works with single-server pricing a bit more. You can typically get a better port out of it this way too (GoRack for example limits servers to 100mbit uplinks on their switches if you don't have your own, which you wouldn't for single U colocation).
Thanks for the mention ^_^. We have quite a bit of space, hoping to fill it out a bit
Wow, never knew I could get enterprise grade hardware for this cheap until today! I'm overwhelmed!
Could you tell me what happened with volumedrive? I tried reading their offer thread here, all I got was that they were using burstnet's datacenter before, and they moved to their own causing downtime, and burstnet did some dirty trick to cause them trouble. Don't get much of it though.
As far as I remember, there was a video by Google saying that they use exclusively consumer grade hardware for their servers. Anyways, this is for my own use. I wouldn't play with other's data by not using an enterprise grade HDD. But still, you can get 9 times the resources for the same price, so wouldn't it be preferable to colocate this 72 GB server than to get an 8 GB dedi rented? Where do you colocate it for $35?
I'm not looking forward to colocating a server right now, but when I do, I'll make sure I do it only when I have a good enough volume, so as to make it worthwhile. The hardware management part sure seems tough to deal with.
Do you know of any reseller who deals with single-server colo?
If I were doing something commercially colocating the 72GB server would be the way to go, it really was dirt cheap $429 for the server with free shipping, $140 for the processor upgrade and I repurposed 3x2TB drives and a 240GB SSD.
The colo is a rent to own through Chromobyte, free IPMI, 1GB port limited to 10TB/month, I can send my own HDD and RAM in for installation in my server during the RTO period, pretty sweet deal though I am paying a little more for the server through RTO than if I purchased it outright.
So you didn't have to buy the drivers then? So did you buy this server from ebay? Or from chromobyte?
I bought it from Chromobyte, it's their Chicago BDS, currently they are out of stock. I've been impressed with the service thus far.
The server came with one 500GB HDD, I found two WD 2TB Enterprise drives on sale and had them shipped to the datacenter and they were installed within 24 hours. There are some caveats with shipping your own equipment (prior notification, size limits, etc) but still a great deal.
Chromobyte's primiary business is minecraft servers so at prime US gaming times the network is a little slow but not slow enough to complain about.
ebay dude. they r freaking cheap.
So is it a lease-to-own plan? And did they charge you to install the 2 TB drives you shipped them?
Yes, just found out about it.
Yes, lease to own, rent to own. There was no charge to install the drives.
Sounds fair enough.
Now I know that I can buy servers from ebay, any more places?
In the day... local industries and city government would auction off pallets of "scrap" computer equipment, some of it was good, most of it was crap that I felt guilty dumping at the local computer recycler.
Some datacenters will allow you to upgrade to gigabit ports for a little bit more money. I have a dedicated gigabit drop to my router.
Oh for sure. That gets pretty spendy though.
I personally go on craigslist, the servers aren't always the cleanest or the newest, but they work and are basically dirt cheap.