Is it just me, or are basic servers incredibly expensive now??
Posted by bcredeur97@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 178 comments
I just threw together a little build on Dell’s website. A basic PowerEdge R260
Built something that’s seems simple and should be inexpensive in my head: 6 core cpu 64GB of RAM The little Dell boss thing with 480GB boot drives in raid 1 2 1.92TB 2.5” SSD’s (1 DWPD, it’s fine, plus why are HDD’s even an option? Its 2025) Windows server 2022
How exactly is this worth $8000? Literally people out there with optiplexes that are better than this lol (maybe they aren’t in terms of redundancy but still, an R260 doesn’t even have a 2nd power supply!)
Rewind back before 2020 and something in the same tier in that timeline was maybe $3k at the most?
But the value of this server according to Dell seems way too high compared to “street value” of the raw parts, which I feel is way closer to that $3k figure I just mentioned.
I get that it’s a “server” and you get a nice warranty and all but IS IT really worth it?
Not to mention you buy this thing and it’s immediately worth like half what you paid and probably less than a 1/4 within a year or two. It’s such a waste…
Conspiracy zone: Is this just some cooperation to get everyone to use public clouds? Like what if you just want to replace your 10 year old T110 II that you bought for your business of 10 people that was like $1500 at the time lol… there’s not even a $3000 option out there for you. The server market SUCKS for a simple small business right now.
My best advice is to buy something 2 years old if you can find anything (who would get rid of their stuff so soon in this market?)
arominus@reddit
Get the smallest spindle and ram option you can to get the raid card you want. Then get drives in the aftermarket. I usually buy Intel ssds, this is significantly cheaper as Dell taxes ram/storage really hard.
Alert-Mud-8650@reddit
Where do you get intel SSD's? I thought they left the SSD market 4 years ago.
arominus@reddit
I was buying them off Amazon, though it does look like that’s gotten pricey. Samsung pm883s are a decent price though. 3.84tb for $392
Responsible-Shake112@reddit
I am looking for a server for a hotel and I found this PowerEdge T160 Tower Server. Still not sure about the final specs but the owner wants to spend bare minimum on IT equipment
Alert-Mud-8650@reddit
Why does a hotel need a server? Most just used what ever website their brand tells them to use. Nothing really gets stored locally.
Responsible-Shake112@reddit
POS system installed locally. RFID control for locks is installed locally
Alert-Mud-8650@reddit
Are you sure a windows server is required for those 2 tasks? I have seen just a regular windows pro computer handle that type of stuff.
Responsible-Shake112@reddit
You are right. However the rfid system should be operational 24/7 so the computer needs to have uptime 24/7. The system for the locks is not in place yet. The pos system is in use right now. We have old power edge server running the main node with sql database. If my server dies, I have to reinstall the main node, call my provider to enter the license number and copy the backup that is synced to my one drive every night around 3am.
I am not sure how a normal pc - let’s say think center or dell opti plex - would run 24/7. I have a opti plex pc tower s a back up.
I noticed that when a windows pro has a longer uptime, it lags. Printing jobs are stuck in print spooler.
If you tell me that I can solve with 2 business type of pcs, I’ll be happy not to worry about a “server”
Alert-Mud-8650@reddit
I have seen plenty of dell optiplexs run 24/7 for years without falling. The RFID card access systems I have experience with allow the pc to add or remove cards from the database but don't actually need the computer for the door access system to function without more details I can only assume the system you are looking at will work the same way.
Any Windows system pro or server will have some down time to install updates unless you decide to turn updates off
Responsible-Shake112@reddit
Thank you for the confirmation. The software provider trying to sell the idea of a server. I know that I can run those two software programs on a pc. I need to find a way to convince them to buy 2 pcs for the price of the 1 server :)
Alert-Mud-8650@reddit
How many computers access the software?
Responsible-Shake112@reddit
5 thinkpads t480 at the reception and 5 dell opti plex. All windows 10 pro because the POS is only compatible with win10. Server is win 2016 and I just do backups to be on a safe side when it decides to go one day. I check my backups regularly
SoylentAquaMarine@reddit
Dell is hyper expensive, spec out a comparable HP at SHI
Trualiah@reddit
My org is paying roughly 3x the price for an HP server from SHI vs. buying something from Dell. Also, SHI's support has been less than fantastic lately, but not concerning the hardware itself. I hope there are different support divisions between software and hardware support.
SoylentAquaMarine@reddit
good to know, I am speccing out dell for a projct and the price for storage has my head swimming, I am thinking HPE msa 1060 is a much better price, but I was waiting for the quote from dell to get a price from shi for a hpe server with comparable specs. Jeez, things are way too expensive anymore, I guess we'll have to mine bitcoin to pay these things off.
wideace99@reddit
Building your own devices with off-the-self hardware, it not only cheaper but fit better to specific needs, beside there is easy to find spare parts to replace if needed.
Not only servers but also routers, access points, e.t.c.
Alert-Mud-8650@reddit
I have not heard of people building their own access points?
wideace99@reddit
Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 and proper Wi-Fi chipset, even multiple Wi-Fi chipsets if you need hundreds of concurrent client connections per AP.
Or other SBC :)
hlloyge@reddit
For home use, sure. SOHO, sure. Company with 1k employees? Think about it.
a60v@reddit
It's fine if you do it properly and maintain spare parts, staff to install them, etc. Essentially, you end up being your own support contract. It generally makes economic sense only for very small business or very large ones, but it is a valid option that is worth considering.
wideace99@reddit
Using such hardware for more than 20 years in multinational corporation with over 10k employees on 4 continents. At least it was... in the last years many were fired (worldwide) due to resizing :(
It's also true that in the last 10 years the total numbers on prem have gone down since the policy is to migrate to cloud. We still have such custom servers that are stubborn and still work, but we have decommissioned them since they are no more electric energy efficient.
Unfortunately the management is eager to migrate all to cloud even the costs has raised to the sky... its "funny" to have non-tech management :)
CPAtech@reddit
Sure.
Que_Ball@reddit
They will massively discount it as soon as you talk to a sales rep. They peg the price of after sales service contracts to the overinflated "retail" price. So they occasionally get a sucker who buys at the website prices but in general nobody pays that price. You must engage with sales to get a decent price. To get a good price you must counter with a competitive supermicro, Lenovo, or hpe quote so they can apply to their manager for extra discounts to match.
The website is only useful to generate a rough configuration but the prices on upgrades are complete horse crap. Just send the same config to sales and ask for quote and mention you are comparing to lenovo and supermicro to help get it lower right off the bat.
G34RY@reddit
But why? Just be upfront and transparent with your prices.
Yoonzee@reddit
It’s to leave room for distribution and resellers. MSRP has to be the highest price because all of the tiered discounting is based off it.
It makes less sense for companies that are direct to customer only
DoogleAss@reddit
For the same reason retailers make a price $49.99 vs $50.00.l or why they love to use rebate rather than giving you the discount right then and there. It’s why they have impulse racks bay registers. It’s why they tell you the MSRP is one price but they actually got it cheaper so they can run deals tricking you into thinking it’s a good deal
Sales no matter the industry is just a mind game man and unfortunately it works on many
General_Exception@reddit
Psychology.
If you see an $8000 price point on the website, and then get a $4000 quote from a sales rep, and you’re comparing it against a $4000 machine from a competitor…. This seems like a better deal.
An $8k value for $4k, vs a $4k value for $4k.
sofixa11@reddit
Everyone in tech knows that if you're getting a 50-80% discount, the original price is nonsense and you didn't get a good deal.
Previous-Height4237@reddit
Yea but the people making these decisions have the brain volume of a small primate. Sales and marketing.
itchyouch@reddit
The business folks don't understand how the sauce is made, so the price anchoring works.
Most of us build computers from scratch, so we have a baseline of what the real competitive floor is and laugh at the pricing.
The business is trained to see things in terms of value, so they'll pay a $1k for a $1 thing if it's business value is $10k.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
Which is why where I work the management types don't get involved until after all the negotiations are done and we have all the best offers. And they never get told what the original price was, it's irrelevant to their decision making.
ofd227@reddit
Your finance department doesn't. They just see a discount in a quote and then take it to their boss and claim they saved the company money
G34RY@reddit
Oh, I get it but I don't agree with it. It's along the same lines of not listing pricing on your website. Immediately makes me not want to investigate the product.
Mindestiny@reddit
Not to mention you'll get at least a few like OP that don't talk to a rep and just buy for the inflated price
bregottextrasaltat@reddit
scammers
FarToe1@reddit
But thats ignoring an unmeasured metric - all those people who walk away at the first price and go and buy elsewhere.
da_chicken@reddit
Ask JCPenny about it.
oldgreymere@reddit
The over inflated msrp is for government contracts.
Most gov tendering programs won't look at you unless you 'discount by 50%'. So they just inflate the original price.
angrydeuce@reddit
Because the prices depend on the relationship you have with the vendor, how much you're spending with them, i.e., what you, as a customer, are worth to them. The pricing on their website is their "we don't know who the fuck you are" pricing. It makes perfect sense from a sales perspective, until you establish that relationship they don't know who the fuck you are and what your business is worth.
I work for a small MSP, roughly 7K fully managed endpoints spread across a couple hundred clients. Joe Blow accountant is going to pay more for the one laptop they buy every 3 years then the client buying a dozen a month. The costs on our side go down when we're dealing in quantity because we are able to automate more of the setup, therefore that savings gets passed along. The one off every three year laptop takes us much more time to deploy because there is little to no standardization we can leverage...you can't really standardize when you're refreshing hardware that infrequently. Less standardization means more work needed on our part, which means higher prices to them for the hardware because the setup is almost invariably covered as part of an AYCE billing arrangement with that client and we need to recoup that cost somewhere.
I'd imagine it's somewhat similar to the major hardware vendors, too. They're negotiating with their own teams internally on locking in that pricing. A larger account is more or less automated in terms of margin, they don't need to go back and forth with other people on their side to get something locked in because all that ground work was already done long ago.
Even at our volume where we're already getting baked in discounts, we still go through our various partner reps when we have larger orders coming through to see if we can claw back a little more margin on our end, and usually do. It also helps that we're paying for everything up front, never on terms, which allows them to scrape a couple more points off the top, and coupling multi-year support contracts in (which is a requirement on our end) allows them to shave a point or two there, too. All things that Joe Schmoe won't see because they don't know Joe Schmoe at all.
FLATLANDRIDER@reddit
Yup, our discount on our servers last year was 60% after going through sales.
NotAMotivRep@reddit
60% is about the standard. Whether you're buying servers, network equipment or other infrastructure. MSRP is a joke in the IT world.
che-che-chester@reddit
Our Procurement team once told me they start their negotiating at 60%.
sobrique@reddit
It's a stupid game really. I think our "high score" so far is an 85% discount
OkWelcome6293@reddit
MSRPs are meaningless because they are calculated so they still make sales margin even selling to a company that has the Most Favored Nation clause on that SKU.
NotAMotivRep@reddit
It's definitely an open secret. I'm not sure why we still collectively practice this arcane ritual.
OkWelcome6293@reddit
Because it's in dozens of overlapping contracts, which are all negotiated on different cycles. Good luck getting out of that mess.
NotAMotivRep@reddit
Providing quotes and then playing silly glad handing games until you get to a reasonable number isn't something covered under contract law. That's more "silly corporate policy" territory.
OkWelcome6293@reddit
>Providing quotes and then playing silly glad handing games until you get to a reasonable number isn't something covered under contract law.
We were talking about why MSRP prices look unreasonable. The Most Favor Nation clause a vendor might have for a customer is 100% included in contracts. Contract stipulations like that are the main point of long term contract negotiations between vendors and customers.
And that is absolutely how RFPs/RFis work too. You give a first number, then you have at least another round or two of negotiations resulting in a "Best and Final Offer".
NotAMotivRep@reddit
Always nice to meet suits in the wild that aren't complete knobs. Thanks for the explanation.
OkWelcome6293@reddit
No problem. I was on the "otherside of the table" as a network engineer for a dozen years before I moved into pre-sales a few years ago. I spend a good portion of my engineering career asking the same question, until one of the vendors explained how it worked for me.
psiphre@reddit
ok but a 60% discount on an 8000$ server is still 4800$, which is >50% more than the $3000 that the OP was talking about.
PhillisCarrom@reddit
60% from $8k is $4800 off. Price would be $3200
psiphre@reddit
ah, fair. it's late and i got my order of ops wrong. cheers
itchyouch@reddit
When I make basic math mistakes, it's cuz I'm not well rested.
Hope you're able to get some r&r and the job isn't too stressful for ya!
Mister_Lizard@reddit
60% discount would mean he's paying 40% - $3200.
highdiver_2000@reddit
Not Dell. My ex employer was doing a tech refresh on the data centers. We got a couple of APICs at 80% off. Lots of spine and leave switches. FOC.
TheDarthSnarf@reddit
Premier can give decent prices, often better than what my rep can do… but configurations are very limited.
DeathIsThePunchline@reddit
just bought four servers. original quote would have been 91k each paid around 25k each
imnotabotareyou@reddit
What are the specs on a server like that?
DeathIsThePunchline@reddit
They were r770s with a bunch of 25 gig nics and 4x1.92 nvme with 256gb of memory. Nothing special.
TooDamFast@reddit
I did just did the same. R710, 64 core, 256 GB RAM and 8 SATA SSDs. I’m still not sure why it’s worth $25k ($80K MSRP was laughable) other than it’s not my money so I don’t care. The same specs from SuperMicro cost $8k but since my University doesn’t have a contract with them, I have to jump through hoops like getting multiple competing quotes. I buy a new server every 7 or 8 years so I’m good for a while.
Simple_Size_1265@reddit
64 Core or 64 Threads?
R760, 32 Cores, 256 GB RAM, 2+8 NVMe Drives, 2x Dual 100G, 2x Quad 1G, and we paid 17k (€) per Server
TooDamFast@reddit
64 core 128 threads: Duel Intel Xeon Gold 6548Y+ 2.5G, 32C/64T, 20GT/s
not_logan@reddit
It looks like broken process as for me. Why should I contact the company through the sales rep to get a fair price? Why are the prices so inflated so company can easily give me 50%+ discount without loosing their income? It doesn’t make any sense unless manufacturers ran by sales
Technolio@reddit
Is this different if you have a Dell business account and are logged in while building out your server? Or even then does it make a huge difference to talk to a sales rep?
erparucca@reddit
second one, unless by Dell Business Account you mean having access to a Premier Page. A premier page is the company's (your company) own custom shop: pricing/discount has been pre-agreed by your purchase department with Dell Sales.
oldgreymere@reddit
The over inflated msrp is for government contracts.
Most gov tendering programs won't look at you unless you 'discount by 50%'. So they just inflate the original price.
CommercialMindless35@reddit
This is the way.
TomCatInTheHouse@reddit
This here. I always contact my Dell sales rep and tell them I'm required to get quotes from 3 different companies/brands. Suddenly Dell servers are the cheapest instead of the most expensive.
Mindestiny@reddit
This is the answer. Never pay sticker price through a sales portal, always talk to the rep
Magic_Neil@reddit
This is the big one, but also 2tb enterprise SSD ain’t cheap (relatively speaking), and Win Server is silly expensive.
For me though, it’s important to understand the days of “cheap”/“low-end” servers is dead. Six cores? You’re licensing sixteen on the server, anyway. Even the cheapest CPU is crazy fast, and it’s all very much meant for virtualization.. which sucks when you need a simple bare metal host for something dumb like DSLS.
Sea_Fault4770@reddit
If anyone is running a critical production server on one physical device in 2025, you are doing it wrong.
Magic_Neil@reddit
Some apps LITERALLY need to be run on bare metal, and don’t have good options for redundancy. Again, DSLS sucks.
Oniketojen@reddit
Small shops and banks will do this and some don't really have a choice. For example some banks, the core processing is on a local server that a vendor supports and configured. The risk can be offset with plenty of redundancy, RAID, NIC, Power Supply etc.
There have also been multiple problems with various cloud providers lately for different services. Zoom for example last week. Cloud doesn't prevent failure and downtime of service so there is still plenty of incentive to have on premise critical solutions.
OperationMobocracy@reddit
When I worked for a VAR as a project engineer, we had to spec servers for clients but the Dell Configurator for VARs that we used only showed list prices and it was a massive time sink to config a server, get sales to find the real price, and then go back and tweak the config relative to the price if it was outside what the customer was willing to pay.
The net result was that time urgency often resulted in less oomph under the hood than was good for the client because we’d end up under-speccing the server in order to get a quote out quickly because sales was antsy to get a quote in their hands. The irony of course being getting a better machine quoted and discounted was slowed because sales would sit on Configurator configs for a day or two before getting them priced realistically.
A lot of the time the whole dumb process would end up moot because there would be some really good canned config that ended up being cheaper than a lesser config WITH discounts. SANs were like this a lot — a lot of clients ended up with all-flash SANs at astonishing discounts that way.
I sort of came away with the idea that sales were structured like this because ultimately sales people (or promoted, former sales people) controlled the sales process and it gave sales people a purpose. Had they just priced everything competitively up front at prices customers would be likely to go for, you could just eliminate a whole lot of sales related jobs. The sales cycle was just a lot of busy work and kabuki theater that justified sales jobs. But it continues in part because it generates enough income to support the process, so it’s “self supporting”.
I remember getting sucked into a post-sales situation with a customer whose new environment sucked performance wise because everything was so low end. Of course the reason was the right config for them was so high MSRP and the sales person was so hot to get a quote that the config got low-balled to get a fast, cheap price which of course the customer grabbed onto right away. Dude got the sale, the customer was pissed the money they spent produced shitty performance and then dumped us when no amount of tweaks could improve it. I guess we made some profit on the sale? Of course the company was owned by the guy who headed up sales so there was no way sales caught any blame here, it was a combination of blaming the customer with a dash of project engineering for low-speccing.
OveVernerHansen@reddit
Back 10 years ago we'd get 80 % off list prices. It was insane.
FarToe1@reddit
I hate that Dell do this.
ScreamingVoid14@reddit
Not to mention that the sales reps have access to non-public configuration options.
devloren@reddit
I have offended many-a friends with this opinion, being from Nashville, but Michael Dell, while maybe not legally defined as a criminal, pushes the gray area as much as possible. Absolutely detestable in all facets of business, but those sales people sure do make a killing.
aitorbk@reddit
I have a big problem with bazaar pricing. I no longer have to deal with offers, pricing, etc of servers, but I truly hate to have to be haggling. And I had to, of course, but just give me a price, damn. Of I could, I would just avoid the "call for pricing" software and hardware, plus the unreal pricing.
LOLBaltSS@reddit
Yep. Have to play the game. It is the same with a lot of products at a VAR. Sure, you could pay the list price that CDW puts up on their site, but you're going to be paying out the ass for it if you don't throw it over to your rep.
TargetFree3831@reddit
Screw Dell with their 4min reboots and bugged iDrac.
Supermicro and Ipmi ftw.
Hungry-King-1842@reddit
This is also FTW if you need built in Chinese back doors
TargetFree3831@reddit
Do you still believe that?
No proof was ever demonstrated. I've been running SM for 15 years and can promise you not a single connection to China has been made from any of them.
https://www.supermicro.com/newsroom/pressreleases/2018/press181004_Bloomberg.cfm
Or do you prefer iDrac just because you think theyre made in America?
https://www.servethehome.com/idracula-vulnerability-impacts-millions-of-legacy-dell-emc-servers/
TargetFree3831@reddit
Do you still believe that?
No proof was ever demonstrated. I've been running SM for 15 years and can promise you not a single connection to China has been made from any of them.
https://www.supermicro.com/newsroom/pressreleases/2018/press181004_Bloomberg.cfm
Or do you prefer iDrac just because you think theyre made in America?
https://www.servethehome.com/idracula-vulnerability-impacts-millions-of-legacy-dell-emc-servers/
Hungry-King-1842@reddit
It’s also that everything has gone sky high. We have a small on prem virtual environment that we spent less than $500,000 to build out 5ish years ago. An estimated hardware refresh with roughly the same compute and memory is over 1.2 million now and this is pricing from OE sales reps trying to do what they can do to get the prices down.
You do the math.
ghjm@reddit
I've been out of the physical servers biz for a while. What's "the little Dell boss thing?"
Alert-Mud-8650@reddit
Nvme pice express card
TooDamFast@reddit
NVME boot drives.
movieguy95453@reddit
Source the RAM and drives separately. This is what blows up the price.
I purchased 2 new servers for my company last year to replace our 2 out-dated servers. Got about 3x as much RAM for the same price by purchasing from Crucial. We had relatively new SAS SSDs in our old servers, so I just reused those in the new servers. All in I wound up spending $7500 each for the 2 servers. They are probably a bit over-built, but it gives us capacity and flexibility.
bstock@reddit
Also I've been working with server hardware for over 20 years and I've never once laid hands on a 200-series server, and I think only once a 400-series. I didn't think anybody actually buys those lower end servers. Also who the hell can keep track of how much tariff is applied to what from where, it changes nearly every day atm.
Alert-Mud-8650@reddit
I have been IT support for small businesses in my local area for over 20 years and see the lower end servers. Regularly at places that have 5-30 computers and a line of business program that is not cloud based, requires local server and SQL as the backend database.
malikto44@reddit
I generally do two choices, when speccing servers:
For hardware that has to be up 24/7/365 and the hardware failing can cause user-facing outages, I pony up for Dell, with Dell drives, Dell RAID controllers, Dell everything. If I need to upgrade RAM, I buy Dell RAM. This way, with their high end support, the ball is in their court.
For stuff that has some redundancy, I just go Supermicro. VM hosts come to mind, because a reboot is painful, but a reboot would happen anyway regardless the server. All the more reason to spec
n+2orn+3for compute machines, so one can be being maintained, and if another topples over, life goes on.Same with MinIO. I use Supermicro (I'm so used to CamelCase that I sometimes type it in as "SuperMicro", even though the "M" isn't capitalized) hardware when building this type of cluster, because if I have
n+2or evenn+3resilience, and I have a few spare Supermicro servers that I can populate with drives, slam in and replace the failed hardware.Overall, if one can, this is why one tries to go with services, not servers. For example, if one has a virtualization layer and a node goes down, the VMs will be spun up and rebooted on other nodes. It is a user facing outage... but nowhere near as bad as it stuff running on bare metal going down and staying down.
As a digression, I wish more than IBM and VMWare can do fault tolerance VMs, where it consists of two VMs running on two different nodes, one VM being a shadow of the other, where if the host a VM is on does croak, the shadow VM immediately takes over, so other than a stun duration, the outage time is a few seconds.
bstock@reddit
Yeah, if the budget allows I do tend to go Dell drives. You get good warranty and Dell can't turn around and say 'it's because you used your own drives' to you.
But a lot of the time I'm building out at least
n+1(preferably+2or more) at the server level, you basically have to if you want to be able to patch and reboot hosts without taking down services. Plus at a minimum, mirrored boot drives and raid 6 for the storage arrays, with hot and cold spares available. With that much redundancy and spares on hand, the value of the Dell support and warranty is largely negated.Personally the Supermicro gear seems 'fine', but I've not been super impressed. Their remote management stuff is kind of mediocre, and I can usually get the Dell price to be not that much higher than Supermicro when shipping around or with a good sales rep. If budgets are tight I'd typically prefer to go refurbished Dell over new Supermicro, as long as you thoroughly test it upon arrival. For some companies that's fine, for others they require full warranty and support on everything so obviously doesn't work there, but those places have budgets to work with.
I also don't typically run full fault tolerance at the VM level. Shared storage meaning the VM reboots to a new host upon hardware failure is good enough for nearly everything I've worked on, though I agree getting that to work on more platforms would be nice.
psiphre@reddit
compatibility, support by the hardware/firmware/vendor are concerns.
bstock@reddit
Right, I agree. But there was the first part of "If you're looking for affordable" in there.
I'm not saying you get nothing for buying Dell drives, but they are significantly more expensive than slotting in your own. A lot of the time, I throw in my own drives, and keep a hot spare or two in there, plus at least one cold spare on site. You still save a ton of money and have plenty of redundancy. But that's assuming you have someone on site that regularly monitors the servers and array health status (or monitors remotely with good notifications setup, but even then that can fail so ideally someone can check in and make sure all the lights are blue from time-to-time).
All that being said, you often can get a good price concession on drives when working with a sales rep, especially if buying equipment in bulk.
aten@reddit
Alert-Mud-8650@reddit
Dell's prices on extra RAM and storage drives has always been extra high but I feel they have become ridiculously high.
I checked on basic T160 tower starts at $1229.17 with a 2TB hard drive and the SSD options quite high. 480Gb SSD for $548.02 1.92 TB SSD for $1,753.67 each
vNerdNeck@reddit
That's list price. You can get it cheaper by talking to a sales rep. The website is for people that want to just order something and not talk to folks.
salazka@reddit
Tiered storage systems.
HDDs are a cost effective storage that with moderate use can offer longer lifespan and better repair/recovery options. It fits great with mid tier data storage needs.
Until recently, FB and others would even store our long forgotten untouched images on optical disks. Probably still does.
https://www.datacenterfrontier.com/cloud/article/11431537/inside-facebook8217s-blu-ray-cold-storage-data-center
Keeping all that on SSDs is risky and costly.
NoReallyLetsBeFriend@reddit
On Supermicros site last year, built a nicer server than our MSP or VAR could spec, and paid about $10k less than their pricing, without even chatting with sales.
SteveJEO@reddit
Supermicro is the only vendor that's ever tried to talk me DOWN for a spec.
antiduh@reddit
They also sell AMD cpus like the 9850x. Miss me with that 14900k "hurr 2/3rds of my cores are E cores" bullshit.
malikto44@reddit
I have had nothing but excellent luck with Supermicro hardware. The hardware works well, on par with everyone else.
NoReallyLetsBeFriend@reddit
Funnily enough, when building the server on each brands website, Lenovo (based on part #s) used a SMC motherboard. My old EMC server at my house, SMC motherboard and backplane. I figure I might as well build with them since their components are in everyone else's hardware anyway
malikto44@reddit
I have seen million-dollar appliances that were used for vertical market tasks be Supermicro hardware with a secret sauce.
One was a Supermicro blade and enclosure. When the vendor told the company that their way of "supporting" this crazy expensive appliance was to trade it in, I wound up fixing it by updating the firmware on the motherboard and enclosure, adding RAM and a SIEM log forwarder. When the vendor's sales rep asked how things were going, and when the company would trade their creaky old appliance in, I mentioned that what they sent was working fine, and because they didn't offer support, I provided my own.
The above mentioned appliance company then extended me a job offer, because I also did stuff to their code that they never thought of.
Another example was a SAN (which ran around $20-50k) that had two controllers was mainly a SMC frame with a battery backed up DRAM DIMM on each controller, and a disk/SSD array that was shared with both. A few custom hardware mods, a lot of secret sauce on top of existing operating system stuff.
This makes me wish for a relative easy way to get ZFS to be able to be handled by multiple controllers, even if it is an active/passive configuration with a witness volume or direct connection. This way, one could put an array on a SAS bus with two machines, and have easy SAN capabilities with redundancy across controllers.
sep76@reddit
Supermicro (atleast with our importer) not having the super inflated list price. Is one of the top reasons why i like them so much.
Smyles9@reddit
That sounds like a constant up mark related thing going on.
Lenovo and probably dell mark up their computers often by 50% or more so for example you’ll often see $4000 laptops that are actually more like $1500-2000 but they just have almost constant discounts on them.
Pelatov@reddit
The big thing for me with Dell at work is the warranty and replacements. Of course going through sales gives steep discounts, but the fact if I have an issue with any part they have someone headed out to my datacenter in under 24 hours and replacing the part instead of me having to coordinate the whole thing.
But yes, msrp is a joke.
CO420Tech@reddit
I just go on new egg and buy a refurbished one from 2 years ago. They're like 1/4 the price, 90% of the power and use 3% more electricity.
Googol20@reddit
We pay website pricing?
Sudden_Office8710@reddit
They are adjusting for tariffs. It’s insane I was quoted $30k for (5) 384GB kits for (5) R740s
6 months ago I got (2) R760s with 512GB RAM with 200TB NLSAS usable for $40k no conspiracy just a stupid POTUS
Wild-Obligation-7336@reddit
Even the outlet prices will be lower if you talk to your rep. I usually get idrac enterprise and rails thrown in and they still get me a lower price after that.
beedunc@reddit
Then buy used or refurb. A well-maintained Dell Server or Precision/Optiplex workstation will last 10+ years.
asteraceaesHeart@reddit
I feel like cobbled together means self owned and self maintained. Is that not a good thing?
Aggressive-Carpet918@reddit
This is why I buy refurbished. I can get stuff that's 2 years old or so for everything I need. You can get way more hardware for that 3k that way. Mostly use serversupply.com for HPE stuff.
Miserable-Garlic-532@reddit
It's the SSD. Get rid of it and buy separately
TooDamFast@reddit
Then you get to put up the constant “uncertified drive detected” errors and good luck with warranty. It’s not my money but it is my ass on the line.
KickedAbyss@reddit
Buy dell ssds from a 3rd party for half or less then.
SousVideAndSmoke@reddit
It’s just like Cisco retail prices. Nobody ever pays retail.
intoned@reddit
You can get 50% off just by asking.
JonMiller724@reddit
Who still uses hardware servers? Why?
aream06@reddit
I’m assuming aws, gcp and azure do :)
JonMiller724@reddit
Not in the sense that you are referencing lol.
Jswazy@reddit
The service is what you're paying for. If you don't need that buy some 2 year old hardware for 80% off the new cost.
angrydeuce@reddit
You need to talk to someone and get a business account open. Then they may be able to knock some of price off but unless you're dealing in decent volume its going to be difficult to get significant discounts below MSRP.
We use Ingram and Synnex generally come in like 40% below MSRP but we're also spending high 6 figures with them annually, too. Otherwise server supply is pretty reasonable if you just get a chassis barebones and build it out yourself, its really not that hard.
Meat_PoPsiclez@reddit
Right, volume matters a lot. Last time I bought a new server (r740, pretty middling configuration), talked to two vars (one I had a relationship with), and price shopped vs buying direct from Dell at msrp. The var I previously dealt with came in just under msrp, the new var came in above msrp. Small shop, not a lot of buying or buying power. One or two machines with years of nothing between leaves you paying a lot more.
Next buildout is going to be refurbished because I just can't justify the prices.
StaticFanatic3@reddit
Get a super micro server with a 16 core EPYC 9005. The Zen 5 cores absolutely rip compared to other server CPUs and I just built a config with double the memory for around 5K. The 16 cores also happens to be the exact amount for one server standard license.
PossibilityOrganic@reddit
Also used.... is an option unixsurplus.com or theserverstore.com
You can get a dule socket scalable blade for around 200-300 per node. https://www.theserverstore.com/supermicro-2029tp-htr-4-node-server-w-x11dpt-ps-.html
If power matters maybe look at epyc, there was some awesome deal on some Lenovo epyc servers with 14 x u.2. slot servers. because of a CDN going out of bisneess, for around $800 i cant find link now but i think that over 1k used now.
vertexsys@reddit
For a Canadian option, we are refurbished VAR out of Alberta. Generally speaking we'll be at or below the prices of the major US refurbish shops, and we cover everything with NBD warranty replacement. For the Canadians buying from US shops, they usually don't cover shipping costs, or things get stuck at the border, and some don't even extend their warranty to Canada.
But to OP - even a 14G R640 or R740 will be a huge boost in performance and reliability over an R260. 15G doesn't give enough of a performance boost for the price increase IMO. CPUs are marginally faster, you're still on DDR4 (depending on the CPU, the ram might actually clock slower), it's the same 12G SAS backplane with NVMe options, iDRAC is the same and the major components are the same. You only really gain PCIe 4 and a move from rNDC to OCP for the daughter card.
tnpeel@reddit
We're running a bunch of R630s and some R620s in production still. Power is cheap here and we have plenty of rack space. We are slowly moving to 3rd gen AMD EPYC though as we replace more machines.
BaconGivesMeALardon@reddit
Refurbished Dell Servers | PCSP - Im good
UndeadCircus@reddit
Just go on Amazon and pick up a “renewed” server. Less than $1,000 for some pretty decent spec’d servers.
psiphre@reddit
and it'll be well supported by people in your time zone when some weird firmware or hardware issue that "couldn't be replicated" by RMA QA pops up in your environment... surely.
mrlinkwii@reddit
i mean you can just buy 3 of them , 1 as a backup and 1 as spare , still costing less than the 8k
yeahright-yeahright@reddit
Buy three of the $1000 ones then
UndeadCircus@reddit
Pay $8k for a new server with all the warranties and phone support options then. 🤷♂️
lightmatter501@reddit
That’s because 6c and 64 GB should be a NUC you put on a shelf, not a server. If you want a server, epyc 4004 is what you want, since they are glorified consumer parts because AMD has had ecc support on their consumer CPUs for years. So, I can get that exact config with a current gen processor for $2.3k from thinkmate, before the org discount kicks in. For an extra $500, 16 cores and 10G networking.
Part of the idea with newer servers is that you buy 3 big servers (for HA reasons), and then run your entire company off of those by slicing them up into containers or vms. The number of applications which can actually use a 2x192 core dual socket server is vanishingly small.
When you buy a really small cpu, a big chunk of the cost is in the rest server, so if you just bump the CPU up a bit, you can get a much “bigger” server for not that much extra.
Intel doesn’t really have consumer-grade CPUs with ECC, so you’re stuck with AMD if you want to be on the super low end.
Dell is also really bad for “I want cheap stuff”, since you’re paying the support tax and the dell tax. If you get a parts warranty, it’s generally much cheaper. My org (university) buys a lot of things from thinkmate for this reason, and even as a decent sized customer we’re still around sticker price because thinkmate doesn’t play games with the pricing like Dell does. The only downside is that they expect you to know what hardware you want.
TheGreatAutismo__@reddit
Is it coming out of your wallet? No. Then stop giving a fuck, it's moneybags paying the bill not you and as the others say guilt trip the sales people at Dell and remember, nothing says fuck you, quite like slamming the phone down when they try and resist the guilt trip and then calling them back with a "Are you ready to cooperate now?"
ErikTheEngineer@reddit
I think that will be the result, but not sure about conspiracies. As many have pointed out, the vendors do the whole "here's the MSRP, now let's talk to the finance department!" used car sales thing. But, one other thing to consider is the shrinking market. Every place I've seen has either gone MSP or cloud or both, and that was before the recession. Those edge workloads are tough to get rid of, but with cloud VDI lots of places are. With servers, you're not paying $1000 for a drive, you're buying an insurance policy on it that the vendor has to make good on should a warranty claim come up. Same with everything else...beyond the IPMI/iLO/iDRAC/xClarity remote management stuff, a vendor's not adding a whole lot of value to a server beyond keeping it maintained for you. As fewer places start to need servers, the vendors have to charge more to keep making their line go up for the executives...there are fewer customers to spread the warranty claim risk over.
Also, server vendors are probably in trouble. Microsoft and Amazon don't have racks of ProLiants or PowerEdge servers in their data centers...they have crazy bespoke Open Compute Project caseless designs that the box vendors aren't building for them. When Microsoft opens a data center, they just peel off a few hundred million and give it to Foxconn to build out something exactly to their spec. So, HPE/Dell/Lenovo/Supermicro are chasing a smaller market every year. I'm betting that this recession will be the one that tips most small businesses over to the MSP side, and MSPs are just going to shoehorn their customers into M365/Cloud PC and move their pesky server apps as-is until they get retired.
dotme@reddit
Dell Outlet
Dctootall@reddit
Also not mentioned, surprisingly at least, Tariffs are already causing a TON of pain in the supply chain. A lot of the components are impacted, even if finally assembly happens here, and because of the way they are getting implemented (and then paused), it’s causing massive disruption because companies can’t properly forecast or plan on what their costs will be in advance.
The result is that you can easily be looking at costs jumping anywhere from 50-130% just due to those additional costs.
Here’s an amazing video going over the realities that the tariffs are having on the computing supply chain from a gamer perspective, But the same factors are hitting enterprise, but probably worse because volumes are lower. https://youtu.be/1W_mSOS1Qts
Cylerhusk@reddit
A basic Dell PowerVault san has damn near doubled in price since 2020. So yeah.
MFKDGAF@reddit
How much is it now?
Cylerhusk@reddit
We were buying the PowerVault for around $33k, and now the exact same specd unit will run around 60. Switch was 7k and now 17 or so last I saw.
MFKDGAF@reddit
Damn. I bought a PowerStore 500T in early 2022 and it was like 53k for 8-9TB so like 7-9 drives iirc. I can only imagine what it is now.
I remember buying a 12 port SFP switch back in 2018 and it was like 7k which blew my mind at the time.
DDRDiesel@reddit
I posted recently about frustration with HP due to some drive issues in a build we're putting together, but we also had the exact same build done through Dell and the difference in price was astronomical. Going through HP, we're saving around $4k per server on our project. Like others have said, talk to a representative who can look into discounted bundles or prebuilt configurations that can save you money. Also look into other hardware vendors at the same time and shop around. With the money you're spending, it's best to get several options and make sure the money is spent wisely for such a long-term investment
justinDavidow@reddit
As a Canadian; going to the Dell site and building an R260, with a similar config to what you mentioned; (except I don't see SSD's as an option in the config so I used 2TB HDD's)
came out to:
Adjusting for inflation; $3000 in 2020 given AVERAGE inflation rates per year; would put the current expected value at 3724.69 US; so prices appear to have increased about $200.
grahamr31@reddit
As another Canadian, I can’t help but wonder if there is possibly a reason the price is over 100% higher…be curious to see the same build in the UK as well.
Weary_Patience_7778@reddit
Have you compared to other brands? HP? Lenovo?
psiphre@reddit
why on earth would an american buy lenovo, a chinese company?
wyrdough@reddit
Good quality, better than average remote management, decent price, don't make you buy expensive support contracts for firmware updates, don't have some weird aversion to other countries just because they're different than mine.
"Oh, but they're exfiltrating all your data!" No they're not, unless they're doing it at a rate that would take an entire millennium to copy anything important. I have heard that the Chinese are a very patient people. Or maybe they knew ahead of time that I'm just not that interesting and so didn't bother to backdoor any of my servers.
Tariffs probably mean I'll have to go back to Supermicro for the next refresh, but that's a bridge I'll cross when I get there.
Oh .. Maybe the Lenovo servers are why I get so many emails telling me I need to send Bitcoin lest my n00ds get sent to all my Facebook friends and LinkedIn contacts. /s
olafkewl@reddit
Have you wondered where come all parts of an open computer?
Fatality@reddit
Taiwan
psiphre@reddit
from time to time. some of them are not huawei.
Thomas5020@reddit
Same with everything enterprise, got to waste an hour of your life having a pointless meeting with a salesperson otherwise you get ripped off.
BinaryOverload@reddit
At my place we exclusively use Dell refurbished servers from places like https://techbuyer.com and we save huge amounts in the process.
Refurb servers aren't the right fit for everyone, but most of the time the servers are in a great condition with just cosmetic issues. We're a small company with our own private cloud, and it makes it a heck of a lot more affordable.
Also means we can have the warm and fuzzies about helping save servers from e-waste after big companies get rid of them after a relatively short time
brokerceej@reddit
Because you’re paying the idiot tax for people who can’t or won’t integrate their own box. Go to a real distributor like D&H, Ingram, TDSynnex and buy the individual Dell parts to assemble the server. Same box, same parts, assembled yourself in about 20 minutes is 1/3 of the cost. Everything in an enterprise name brand server is modular and snaps in or is tooless for the most part.
This trick works even better with HPE because the quickspecs and configuration tools give you every individual part number to buy and which are compatible with what all in one document that is highly accessible easy to understand. Dell is a bit more work but still totally easy to do.
mindphlux0@reddit
how do extended (prosupport) warranties work with this sort of buildout? or do they at all?
I'm not paying MSRP, but I have paid the \~60% off discounted price many a time, just because A. the client is paying at the end of the day, on top of my margin, and B. I don't want to fuck with screwing up a warranty claim 3 years down the line. (and I guess C. I don't mind spending 20 minutes assembling a server from parts, but, I'd be billing an hour or two for that, which isn't nothing).
psiphre@reddit
fuck HP, enterprise or otherwise.
FarToe1@reddit
Paywalling bios updates have irrevocably blocked HP for me, which is a shame as I quite liked their ML range for my homelab and have used it for over a decade.
(Plus their laptops are total pump with flimsy bodies and weak hinges)
psiphre@reddit
when i was in high school, not to date myself but a LONG time ago, HP was so bad our friends stopped saying "idiot" and started calling people hewletts.
nickthegeek1@reddit
For a 10-person business, have you considered using a decent mini PC instead of a traditional server - something like an Intel NUC or similar with 64GB RAM and external storage can handle most small biz workloads for around $1000-1500 and they're suprisingly capable.
bachi83@reddit
Intel NUC lacks ECC memory support if I am not mistaken?
proxgs@reddit
It depends, some intel soc supports in-band ecc which takes up 1/32 of your total ram to store ecc bits instead of an additional memory chip. And it works basically the same as standard ecc.
Canuck-In-TO@reddit
Always talk to a sales rep.
Over 10 years ago I figured this out and I always got a better deal across the board. Servers, workstations all the way down to basic desktops and laptops.
Wonderful-Mud-1681@reddit
Oem-ing your os is like 1/4 the cost of the server. Don’t do that.
Odddutchguy@reddit
I was surprised by this as well, as 'previously' a small Dell server for storage would be more cost effective than a Synology/QNAP.
But than I noticed it is because you chose the most expensive parts, this config it's € 7200 ($ 8200) in EU, but the two SSD are € 4k ($4500) of that price.
Also if this is going to replace a old server that already has Windows, can't that be re-used. If you have an active support program on that you could be eligible for 2022 already. Which saves another $ 1400 (so 'base' price would be around $2300 MSRP without the 'fancy' stuff.)
No_Resolution_9252@reddit
Have you ever done server specs before? Asking about HDDs makes me think you are probably just a gamer...
That is a pretty shit server for that amount of SSD. For the love of god, 400 series are about the minimum for anything other than the absolute most limited business needs.
>Not to mention you buy this thing and it’s immediately worth like half what you paid and probably less than a 1/4 within a year or two. It’s such a waste…
Logic like this is as broken as viewing a vehicle as a store of personal value. While it may technically be a depreciated asset, this is an accounting thing. It's value is what it earns for you. What it costs up front is a cost of doing business.
d00ber@reddit
Our rep pressured us to buy early cause of cost increases from tariffs since everything was unsure. Maybe related?
bcredeur97@reddit (OP)
I feel like the pricing has been crazy like this since 2020. I chalked it up to Covid then but everytime I look it’s been the same
LesbianDykeEtc@reddit
Those prices are never going back down.
jeo123@reddit
Connie process in general are crazy lately. Not just on the business side.
Last year a bought a gaming laptop at best for about $1200. I was on their side the other day and the exact same laptop I bought a year ago is not $1800.
Some of its tariffs and I'm some of it is just general supply chain.
But no denying it's crazy.
token40k@reddit
Our Cisco discount was around 60% and Gartner helped with negotiations although will all depend on your volume and compute density, specs you be buying
iansaul@reddit
Was there a price difference between the consumer direct and your Premiere page?
nelly2929@reddit
Never pay what the website says….. rookie mistake
markdueck@reddit
Buy used on ebay. A Rx40 series, will last you easily 5 years. Buy a second one for spare with money left over. I've worked with a T3x0 series and decided never again. Used 5xx to 7xx will give you many times the performance of a new 1xx to 3xx series.
Fabl0s@reddit
Sounds like Webpage/Listed Prices... You practically never pay those numbers, they just need to justify their Sales guys to make some actual offers. Or look outside of the Big Names... Comes with many convenience downsides but allow for much better flexibility and versatility...
Also, HDDs are still waaaaaay cheaper per GB capacity, you don't really need to worry about write endurance and they are fine for stuff that is kept in memory anyway, just less convenient there.