New server

[kidpressingbuttons]

What are people’s opinions on refurb servers?

Need to buy two new hosts but budgets are extremely tight.

 

Been looking at server source but open to suggestions!

[Norphy]

Depends on the age of the server. If you’re going to be using them as virtual hosts, I’d be wary of buying anything Nehalem based these days as VMware warns you that that level of CPU isn’t going to be supported in the next release. Anything Ivy Bridge or newer will still be ok though.

 

The other thing to consider is warranty and support. How long are you looking to keep these things for?

[karldenton]

We got our 3 from John and Dave at ICT direct. All 3 have been exceptional. 2 are VMware hosts now and performance is amazing

We got HP DL380 G7

 

Take a look at bargain hardware website then ring John or Dave to get the extra warranty

[3s-gtech]

A lot of mine are refurbs, alongside an interesting mix of generations of various AMD and Intel stuff. The refurbs have been excellent - powerful and stable. I have three HPs running my Hyper-V hosts on one site - they cost less than my (then new) G7 which runs ESXi. The G7 is running legacy servers - the refurbs are on the full-bore core services.

[caffrey]

+1 for ICT-Direct, our HP G7s are happily running all core services on Hyper-V

[steveg]

I got our last one from server source, costs was less than half what I could get the same spec for direct from dell. Been running 14 vm's on it for 6 months now with no issues at all.

 

Steve

[andy2017]

Look at some commercial auction websites, you'll find some good servers, hex cores, 10 cores, with multi physical processors with like 256 gig ram for around £700.

[PotNoodleTech]

I'd never buy a new server now, refurbished all the way especially if you get warranty on it too!

[synaesthesia]

We've been good with refurbs for a while and use ServerSource. Their bogof deals are typically very handy and aftersale support on the one occasion we needed it was excellent.

[ITGURU]

I think for work purposes i'd always buy new to have the warranty but for my own home setup I've always bought second hand and been just a reliable (same models)

I've only ever had HP servers in the last 14 years, never had a single hardware failure, just the occasional HDD.

Inherited one Dell server which was a nightmare with failures, so would always go for HP.

[synaesthesia]

You'll probably get better service and warranty from the refurb dealers anyway, and HP/Dell will still support them. 3 years minimum from Serversource.

[Blue_Cookeh]

Tbf we always get brand new Dell servers with 5 year nbd ProSupport, which they've always stuck to. You *do* have to go through the rigmarole over the phone before they'll dispatch a tech, but they did stick to nbd on the two occasions we've had to use them in the last 10 years.