Custom Servers
Computerworld released an interesting article not too long ago, which mentioned that recent market trends had seen demand for custom servers grow by a whopping 47.2% in the final quarter of last year, while demand for servers from more well-established vendors fell by 4.4% in the same period. This poses an interesting question: what exactly is the worth in going with a custom server for your business, and is it a better option than going with the large & established “traditional” vendors?
Businesses would likely buy a custom server over a brand-name one for the following reasons:
- Cost benefits: a custom server can often be up to 50% cheaper than those offered by traditional vendors (Dell, HP, IBM, etc).
- Provider flexibility: Many smaller IT companies have no access to the reseller channels that Dell, HP, or IBM sell through. If this is the case for your IT provider, it can exclude them from being able to provide the solution.
- Hardware flexibility: Businesses may have requirements that vary slightly from the configurations provided by bigger vendors. If you’re buying an HP server with a support plan, your only option is HP hardware – and these costs can add up incredibly quickly.
- Support local commerce: By buying a custom server, businesses can support smaller, local IT support companies. It means that you are helping to create jobs in the local community, rather than seeing most of your outlay go offshore.
These are all great reasons to buy a custom server. But what about the downsides?
- Vendor Reputation: With a smaller company comes a greater risk that you’re buying something of poor quality – or the risk that the company might go bankrupt. When it comes to the piece of equipment that will be storing most of your sensitive data, as well as being a centrepiece of day-to-day operations, you don’t really want to buy an over-priced coffee table.
- Uncertainty: There are lots of smaller computer shops out there who simply don’t understand the difference between consumer-grade hardware, and server-grade hardware. These companies will sell their customers a “beefed-up” PC instead of a genuine server-grade machine, because it’s cheaper. While consumer-grade hardware is just as capable in terms of speed, it provides nowhere near the same reliability or management options.
- Vendor Support Plans: Finally, server support plans from big vendors are good. They’re expensive as heck, and require your server to only make use of their proprietary hardware, but when something breaks, they’re there. Depending on which service level you buy, they can get a replacement server to you in as little as 4 hours!
Here at Gravity, we have experience with both IBM servers, and custom-built servers. In our experience, the custom servers have outperformed the IBM servers by miles. We haven’t done enough with the HP servers to pass any judgement, mostly because the pricing of their components is such that I’ve never been able to recommend them to any of my clients.
Configurability, compatibility with non-proprietary hardware, out-of-band management, and price are all key reasons why I would recommend a custom-built server over an IBM server any day.