On 9/26/2010 8:06 AM, devsk wrote:
On 9/23/2010 at 12:38 PM Erik Trimble wrote:
| [snip]
|If you don't really care about ultra-low-power, then
there's
absolutely
|no excuse not to buy a USED server-class machine
which is 1- or 2-
|generations back. They're dirt cheap, readily
available,
| [snip]
=============
Anyone have a link or two to a place where I can buy
some dirt-cheap,
readily available last gen servers?
I would love some links as well. I have heard a lot about "dirt cheap last gen
servers" but nobody ever provides a link.
http://www.serversupply.com/products/part_search/pid_lookup.asp?pid=105676
http://www.canvassystems.com/products/c-16-ibm-servers.aspx?_vsrefdom=PPCIBM&gclid=CLTF7NHNpaQCFRpbiAodoSxK5Q&;
http://www.glcomp.com/Products/IBM-SystemX-x3500-Server.aspx
Lots, and Lots of stuff from eBay - use them to see which companies are
in the recycling business, then deal with them directly, rather than
through eBay.
http://computers.shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=ibm+x3500&_sacat=58058&_sop=12&_dmd=1&_odkw=ibm+x3500&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313
Companies specializing in used (often off-lease) business computers:
http://compucycle.net/
http://www.andovercg.com/
http://www.recurrent.com/
http://www.lapkosoft.com/
http://www.weirdstuff.com/
http://synergy.ships2day.com/
http://www.useddell.net/
http://www.vibrant.com/
There's hordes more. I've dealt with all of the above, and have no
problems recommending them.
The thing here is that you need to educate yourself *before* going out
and looking. You need to spend a non-trivial amount of time reading the
Support pages for Sun, IBM, HP, and Dell, and be able to either *ask*
for specific part/model numbers, or be able to interpret what is
advertised. The key thing here is that many places will advertised/sell
you some server, and all the info they have is the model number off the
front. If you can understand what this means in terms of hardware, then
you can get a bang-up deal.
I've bought computers from recycling places that were 25% or less of the
value I could get by *immediately* turning around and selling the system
somewhere else. All because I could understand the part numbers enough
to know what I was getting, and the original seller couldn't (or, in
most cases, didn't have the time to bother). In particular, what is
usually the best way to get a deal is to look for a machine which has
(a) very little info about it in the advertisement, other than model
number, and (b) seems to be noticeably higher in price than what you've
seen a "stripped" version of that model go for. Some of those will be
stripped systems which the seller doesn't understand the going rate, but
many are actually better equipped versions which the additional money is
more than made up for the significantly better system.
Here's an example using the IBM x3500:
Model 7977-72y seems to be the most commonly available one right now -
and the config it's generally sold in is (2) x dual-core E5140 2.33Ghz
Xeons, plus 2GB of RAM. No disk, one power supply. Tends to go for
$400-500.
I just got a model 7977- F2x, which was advertised as a 2.0Ghz model,
with nothing else in the ad except the word "loaded". I paid $750 for
it, and got a system with (2) quad-core E5335 Xeons, 8GB of RAM, and
8x73GB SAS drives, plus the redundant power supply. The extra $300 more
than covers the cost I would pay for the additional RAM, power supply,
and drives, and I get twice the CPU core-count for "free".
Be an educated buyer, and the recycled marketplace can be your oyster.
I've actually made enough doing "arbitrage" to cover my costs of buying
a nice SOHO machine each year. That is, I can buy and sell 10-12
systems per year, and make $2000-3000 in profit for not much effort. I'd
estimate you can sustain a 20-30% profit margin by being a smart
buyer/seller. At least on a small scale.
--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop: usca22-123
Phone: x17195
Santa Clara, CA
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