Best place to order rack mount single and dual CPU servers in 1U cases?

Cromulent · 9 Dec 2020 at 08:50

The most important thing for me is the warranty as these will be production servers, and so downtime needs to be avoided at all costs. If they had an option to buy spares that I could keep in the datacentre in case a part fails that would be even better. I'd also like to buy the servers using finance rather than paying for the full server upfront.

So far I've been looking at Dell PowerEdge servers. They have the customisation options I am looking for and have an iDRAC port so I can install the operating system remotely and do other system-level maintenance should it be required. I've heard HP are a good option as well, but I was wondering if there were any other options available?

Does anyone have any experience with Dell PowerEdge servers in the datacentre and the technical support that comes with the servers?

fireblade6342 · 9 Dec 2020 at 10:27

I've worked with most servers. All servers will have an IPMI, iDRAC or ilo. Remember that you need an advanced licence to deploy OS install's (usually)
Depending on the warranty they are all pretty good at the server level.
What will be the use case of the servers?

Throrik · 9 Dec 2020 at 10:33

I've deployed most things, from Dell EMC, HPE, Cisco UCS and Lenovo and I prefer UCS for the CIMC (iDRAC equivalent) - Dell PowerEdge will be fine, they all mostly come with the same hardware these days - with Support you'll be looking at various options, the better the support the higher the cost. I do a lot of work with Cisco Datacentre products so we have a good TAC Contract but it does cost. But we also know we get 4 hour replacements, which was recently useful when a clients single point of failure MPLS Firewall failed.

If this is going to be in production, engage with a VAR and don't buy direct with the vendor, as you will get much better prices with a VAR, and you may even be able to do some tech workshops with them.

Cromulent · 9 Dec 2020 at 12:17

fireblade6342 said:
I've worked with most servers. All servers will have an IPMI, iDRAC or ilo. Remember that you need an advanced licence to deploy OS install's (usually)
Depending on the warranty they are all pretty good at the server level.
What will be the use case of the servers?

The primary purpose is virtualisation servers using QEMU and KVM and running OpenSUSE LEAP. I didn't realise you needed a license to install an OS using iDRAC. That is interesting. Thank you for letting me know.

Throrik said:
I've deployed most things, from Dell EMC, HPE, Cisco UCS and Lenovo and I prefer UCS for the CIMC (iDRAC equivalent) - Dell PowerEdge will be fine, they all mostly come with the same hardware these days - with Support you'll be looking at various options, the better the support the higher the cost. I do a lot of work with Cisco Datacentre products so we have a good TAC Contract but it does cost. But we also know we get 4 hour replacements, which was recently useful when a clients single point of failure MPLS Firewall failed.

If this is going to be in production, engage with a VAR and don't buy direct with the vendor, as you will get much better prices with a VAR, and you may even be able to do some tech workshops with them.

Thank you for the useful information. I'm going to sound like a complete idiot but what is a VAR and if so do you know one that works with Dell? I looked at the Cisco UCS stuff but it all seems to be Intel. I kinda had my heart set on Zen 3 EPYC when it comes out. Or at least waiting to see some reviews and performance benchmarks.

Throrik · 9 Dec 2020 at 12:40

Cromulent said:
The primary purpose is virtualisation servers using QEMU and KVM and running OpenSUSE LEAP. I didn't realise you needed a license to install an OS using iDRAC. That is interesting. Thank you for letting me know.

Thank you for the useful information. I'm going to sound like a complete idiot but what is a VAR and if so do you know one that works with Dell? I looked at the Cisco UCS stuff but it all seems to be Intel. I kinda had my heart set on Zen 3 EPYC when it comes out. Or at least waiting to see some reviews and performance benchmarks.

You need a license for iDRAC to get certain features, such as remote console etc.

VAR is a 'Value Added Reseller' someone like CDW (Disclaimer: used to work for them as a pre-sales engineer), Ingram Micro, Softcat, TechData etc etc or you can get much smaller ones. With the UCS C Series you can definitely purchase EPYC CPUs, I don't know if you can get the latest as it's been over 18 months since I was last doing Pre-Sales and now I just implement what I'm given. I'd confirm what QEMU/KVM support best in terms of CPU.

fireblade6342 · 9 Dec 2020 at 13:17

As Throrik said its worth checking the IPMI/ Idrac licencing.

I've never worked with Cisco servers as they were always too expensive for me to get sign off but I did work with Dell, HP, Supermicro and Fujitsu.
Surprisingly Fujitsu had some really nice servers that were cost-effective and had the best international warranty for the kit I was shipping overseas.
Maybe worth a look budget depending.

Also not sure how you want to spec/ work it but you could look at Zadara and similar lease options if you wanted to break the costs down.

If all of the above is of no use I'd personally go with Dell as their pro-support was always spot on when I needed it and they always had a good price to kit balance.
I wasn't a fan of HP they always seemed to fail or have parts drop and need replacing (maybe its just me) but everyone has their own opinions

The other thing that may be worth looking at is what kit you can utilise for backup also as some Venders get better pricing/ deals so make sure you shop around.

Conanius · 12 Dec 2020 at 16:34

I’ve had all sorts in the platforms I’ve supported. HP/Dell/IBM as the most prevalent, and a few places tried Cisco UCS too

where I was last was an SME Hosting company that ram managed hosting/private cloud/multi tenant secure cloud offerings and they’d gone from HP to Dell and we’re about to move to Nutanix boxes.

They’re all much of a muchness, but remember most of these places will put up paywalls for software support when the initial cover period ends. That’s fine if you are happy to keep them under support, but factor that into your costs.

Avalon · 13 Dec 2020 at 09:30

Is this a new hosting venture? Just if so then is rental an option? It gives you a low monthly cost with support and all the benefits of dedicated hardware with non of the agro of dealing with it. Of course if you need a odd ball config or very specific security requirements, that can complicate things, but it may work for you.

Cromulent · 13 Dec 2020 at 11:16

Avalon said:
Is this a new hosting venture? Just if so then is rental an option? It gives you a low monthly cost with support and all the benefits of dedicated hardware with non of the agro of dealing with it. Of course if you need a odd ball config or very specific security requirements, that can complicate things, but it may work for you.

Yeah, it is. I was going to rent a couple of dedicated servers for the beta test of the platform to get any bugs worked out and to get customer feedback on the experience but when I move into production mode I need to have very specific configurations for servers that I have not really been able to find with dedicated server providers which is why I'm looking at buying direct on finance.

Avalon · 13 Dec 2020 at 11:53

Without wanting to be an abbreviated Richard, unless you have a USP then the ratio of people who do this to those still doing it after 12 months is horrific. The ratio of people doing it and actually making any sort of money is even more so. LET/LEB coined the term ‘summer host’ as they tend to pop up during the summer break in the US and go to the wall with little or no notice, it’s really not a market that you can be price competitive in, you need to be the product as cheap design/VPS providers are for nothing and will always have newer hardware and deeper pockets. Please don’t be that guy.

Cromulent · 13 Dec 2020 at 15:03

Avalon said:
Without wanting to be an abbreviated Richard, unless you have a USP then the ratio of people who do this to those still doing it after 12 months is horrific. The ratio of people doing it and actually making any sort of money is even more so. LET/LEB coined the term ‘summer host’ as they tend to pop up during the summer break in the US and go to the wall with little or no notice, it’s really not a market that you can be price competitive in, you need to be the product as cheap design/VPS providers are for nothing and will always have newer hardware and deeper pockets. Please don’t be that guy.

I've got a pretty unique plan with lots of fall back options if one particular part of the plan does not work out so I'm pretty confident. Obviously you can't be sure of anything in business and it might all go south but I believe I have enough differentiation to attract people to the platform. It will not be a simple VPS host.