Trying to find a cheap physical server for a project, any ideas? Here's what I want:<p>- (EDIT) $700-1000 price
-1-2 U rackmount or desktop form factor
- No nodes or anything fancy like 2 PSU's
-Reliable, fairly powerful components
-Able to run linux<p>EDIT: I'm trying to start a hosting startup, and want my own servers.<p>EDIT: Thanks everyone so far, still have not found anything perfect yet, though.
Your best bet is to hit up one of the various resellers. These guys, like Northbay Netoworks in the Bay Area, buy up unused and distressed assets from companies and then resell them on the open market. They will hit up someone like me when we have 100 - 150 "old" servers we want to get rid of, and someone like you when you want to buy a "couple of racks worth" of servers to try something out. Servers that are 4 - 5 years old can be had for $400 - $500 per server caveat they may or may not have memory in them. (which is a problem if they take DDR2 memory which is no hard to find).<p>Conversely there are places like auctionbdi.com which liquidate old buildings and will sell a pallet worth of old servers for $50 - $500 but you really need to go there first to look at them to get a good estimate of how many are recoverable out of the stack. Often times you'll be able to create maybe a dozen "good" servers out of a stack of 50 "liquidated" servers of identical or nearly identical type.<p>The post liquidator market is a place like "Weird Stuff Warehouse" (sunnyvale) which buys pallets of stuff and pulls out the resalable stuff into their shops.<p>If you want exactly 1 machine then a card on the bulletin board of a hacker space saying what your minimum requirements are is a good investment, you can often get one machine for free from someone who is trying to get rid of an old machine (I've "donated" several machines that way)<p>And of course you can create a virtual machine on an existing desktop and just play around with concepts before you get physical hardware.
Find a supermicro reseller and build your own.<p>Back in the days when I ran my own servers (before virtual machines were so easy and cheap -- and I'm talking 10 years ago) all my servers were supermicro cases (and sometimes motherboards), and bought all the other components individually.<p>Definitely cheaper than a HP or whatever server.
Do you mean dedicated servers? Hetzner, which is based in Germany, has some very inexpensive dedicated server plans:<p><a href="http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver" rel="nofollow">http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver</a>
If I were you, I'd take a moment to reconsider just how crucial it is at this stage to have your own servers. I've been in a similar position before, and as appealing as the notion may seem, it's going to create a lot of work that while immediately fulfilling, isn't going to be really moving your product forward.
Here are some links:<p><a href="http://eracks.com/" rel="nofollow">http://eracks.com/</a><p><a href="http://unixsurplus.com/" rel="nofollow">http://unixsurplus.com/</a><p><a href="http://www.newegg.com/Server-Barebones/SubCategory/ID-8" rel="nofollow">http://www.newegg.com/Server-Barebones/SubCategory/ID-8</a> (Add CPU/RAM/HD and you're all set)
Saw this over at slickdeals...
<a href="http://slickdeals.net/f/6883520-dell-poweredge-t20-intel-haswell-pentium-g3220-3ghz-server-w-4gb-memory-and-500gb-hdd-249-free-shipping" rel="nofollow">http://slickdeals.net/f/6883520-dell-poweredge-t20-intel-has...</a>?
...Add some more RAM and it might work for you and save some $ to boot.
Perhaps try an HP N54L, less than $300 (with no drives, but can hold 4). It's a little boxy 'tower' with good build quality.<p><a href="http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/products/proliant-servers/product-detail.html?oid=6280790" rel="nofollow">http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/products/proliant-servers/product-d...</a>
I have a few Dell servers from a previous startup that were racked for about a year, and been in storage since. I'm in San Francisco. Let me know if you're interested in anything, and we can figure out prices.<p><pre><code> Dell PowerEdge R415
16GB memory
(2x) Processor, 4180, 2.6, 6MB, Opteron *16 cores total*
250GB 7200rpm Western Digital Drive
Dell PowerEdge R210
8GB memory
Processor, X3450, 2.66/4.8, 8MB, Xeon Unitary Lynnfield, B1
(2x) 250GB 7200rpm Western Digital Drives
(2x) Dell rack rapid rails (slide out). Super nice.
</code></pre>
I also have a Dell 24 port PowerConnect 2824 switch as well, specs at <a href="http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/powerconnect-2800/pd" rel="nofollow">http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/powerconnect-2800/pd</a>
What you need is white label hardware suppliers. In US, look at Supermicro, Silicon Mechanics, etc. I believe there a few others, a google search on white label server providers should yield you a few hits.<p>Also consider looking up on Alibaba and see if you can find a server manufacturer in China or Taiwan.
I'm using a Dell C6100, on recommendation from <a href="http://www.servethehome.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.servethehome.com/</a> :<p><a href="http://blog.printf.net/articles/2014/02/10/dell-c6100-xs23-sb-server/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.printf.net/articles/2014/02/10/dell-c6100-xs23-s...</a><p>Serve The Home forums are going to be the right place to look for specific deals. <a href="http://forums.servethehome.com/index.php" rel="nofollow">http://forums.servethehome.com/index.php</a>
We used to OEM HP ProLiant DLs at my last gig. Great hardware. The new DL320e starts at $579 list, so will definitely fit within your price point:<p><a href="http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/proliant-servers/product-detail.html?oid=5379527" rel="nofollow">http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/proliant-servers/product-d...</a><p>If you plan to buy a few of these, definitely give their OEM / enterprise sales guys a call - they give very good discounts off list (based on volume, of course).
So - it depends a bit on your purpose - if you just need a linux box, with no particular performance constraing, a Raspberry Pi might do. For a bit more performance, ODroid is nice - see <a href="http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php</a>. ~$200 at the high end. You can of course add some storage via USB. For a serious server machine - the above recommendations may be plausible.
At first i would suggest you buy a VPS ( <a href="http://virpus.com/" rel="nofollow">http://virpus.com/</a> )
Begin with a VPS and not with your own physical servers.
The competition is large and your investment might not pay off.
With just one server you can handle 100 costumers at ease so start with a VPS and see how business will go and then buy your own servers.<p>Hope that helps. Let me know
Try Great Lakes Computers. they sell HP/Dell Blades and Rackmount. I have bought from them couple of times for 20-40% of the price of the new Server.<p><a href="http://www.glcomp.com/products/servers/dell-poweredge/blade-servers" rel="nofollow">http://www.glcomp.com/products/servers/dell-poweredge/blade-...</a>
Some collocation facilities have their own servers you can pay a little more for usually around $100 to 120 a month with everything you need and root access to completely control the server.<p>I like dedicated servers even though the world is going to the cloud, a dedicated server gives you control over your costs.
Can you also post at <a href="http://www.webhostingtalk.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.webhostingtalk.com/</a>, almost every major host and independent resellers/hosts are there and few years back I was able to find excellent server for just $90
OVH.us.<p>It is a French company. I worked with them when I was in France and it was awesome.<p>They recently opened a datacenter in canada and they are the cheapest hosting company I've ever seen.<p>I currently have 10 physical servers there and I have had no problems so far, except maybe their crappy user interface...
I've got (2) 1U Tyan B2881G28U4H servers with Dual Opteron 270 processors, ram, and 15k scsi drives.<p>I shot you an email to see if you're interested. Bought these a while back and they've been sitting in a closet ;(<p>Cheers
This depends completely on what you're trying to do. Does it need to be rackmountable? How many sockets? How many drive bays? For under-a-desk usage (eg, somewhat quiet)?
Sub-question for everyone: on some of the links people posted there were great deals, but the server's had DDR2 RAM, would performance be decreased significantly?
ebay. <a href="http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2047675.m570.l2632.R2.TR2.TRC1.A0.H0.Xsunfire+x4600&_nkw=sunfire+x4600&_sacat=175698&_from=R40" rel="nofollow">http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2047675.m570.l2632.R...</a> look for sunfire x4600 stuff. Very standard with lots of upgradability and headroom.