[Tfug] Advice on building a new machine

[Nathan Hruby]

Hi,

On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 11:32 PM, John Gruenenfelder
<jetpackjohn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello again,
>
> After what seems like far too long, I've finally been given the go
> ahead (and funds) to replace our aging and crippled server/workstation
> in the office.  I can handle choosing most of the parts myself, but I
> would very much appreciate some input and advice on some aspects of
> the hardware which I either have little firsthand knowledge or which
> have changed markedly since I last put a computer together.

[snip previous]

My experience has been that parting together a server saves you
perhaps 10% - 20% over the initial cost of a enterprise server
offering from Dell, HP, or Silicon Mechanics once you use equal
quality and quantity components.  Given failure rates, etc  you'll
loose that savings in Time & Materials and downtime over 5 years when
things break and you have to scramble to find replacement parts for
something that isn't manufactured or support anymore versus calling
support and saying "fix it."  If you don't build computers for a
living or can't capitalize on an economy of scale, long lived servers
are, IMHO, best bought from a reputable vendor with a long-live
support contract.  Essentially you're adding the 5 years of OpEx into
the CapEx outlay.

Also, it seems like this is a "one server to rule them all" kind of
config.  You may want to consider virtualization on this one piece of
hardware to better isolate the various services this machine will
offer.

HTH,

-n
-- 
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nathan hruby <nhruby at gmail.com>
metaphysically wrinkle-free
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