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People paid a lot of $$ into branded servers, promising high resilence, robust and better quality. To me, the difference in these branded servers compare to normal servers using PC is merely the motherboard (dual processors), and maybe it comes raid card, comes with higher memory that's all.

So if you want cheap and high end server (dual or multiple processors), go to Sim Lim and buy the parts and built yourself ;)

Remember you pay a good amount of $$$ for support services. Sure you can buy parts yourself but any failings means you handle the warranty and parts exchange. Enterprise server vendors offer emergency/on-site replacements with the aid of system/hardware engineers. Just ask Elgie :-P

For more dedicated server setup discussion, can visit the threads in

SGWHT Dedicated server forum
http://www.sgwebhostingtalk.com/f8-dedicated-servers-forum.html

SGWHT Technical forum
http://www.sgwebhostingtalk.com/f31-technical-forum.html

Of cos,so if you pay so much for the server.You better make sure that it spoils easily and frequently so that you can get the most bang for the buck for your support service,hahaha.

Gibby wrote:

You better make sure that it spoils easily and frequently so that you can get the most bang for the buck for your support service

This forum is Technical, I'd appreciate adherent detailed discussions here. Remember a portion of the price is for quality of the products, you can't possibly want your equipment to fail consistently. Support pricing is there as an "insurance" to disaster.

It depends ... the difference comes in the reliability as well - RAID based memory, Service Processors, etc etc . A lot of these are proprietary technology. Eg. some vendor have system that can be interconnect to a 32-way Intel XEON systems ...

There are definitely difference between PCs from Sim Lim vs servers from vendors.

The deciding factor on which to go for will determine on how critical these features are to your business ...

downtime costs vs up-front-costs ...

Cheers.

chinyau wrote:

The deciding factor on which to go for will determine on how critical these features are to your business

I believe Andy was speaking from the small-time poor-man perspective ;-) There's absolutely no way an enterprise corporation will go shopping at SLS for hardware to operate a world-scale implementation.

yup.. but of course. What if you get to SMS and the fellow tells you. OK sir, come back in 3 days while we test the motherboard for you to verify that there is indeed a problem. Or worst if he tells you, sorry out of stock, come back in a week when the new batch arrives. Can you business take it?? If yes.. SMS is the way to go, else don't bother being a miser. Penny wise pound foolish!!

The price you pay comes with a certain level of assurances!! To me, even if i am running a poor man business, i will try to at least buy a new server that comes with warranty. I do not want to busy myself troubleshooting over stuff especially when there are other concerns which needs my attention!!

juz my 2 cents worth!

I hv being task to get a development/test server for our Industrial Attachment students to develop some applications.

Although I understand that we can turn a regular computer into a server(afterall it is for development only), but my boss insist that we should get a "real" server.

I m thinking of drafting a set of questions for my boss to fill in,

Example
1. Wat type of application will the server need to support eg. Web application, Email, file sharing or Database?
2. How many concurrent users?
3. Projected no. of applications? etc...

to help me to determine the configuration of the server. eg. no. of processors, Storage space and ram size required so that I can determine the category of server I should look at and eventually make a comparison of the same class from the different vendor.

Do any of u know of such standard template(questionnaire) which I can adopt straight away without having to reinvent the wheel

Some good reasons on getting a <em>real</em> server - (1) you buy the technical support services as well. Unless you like going to Sim Lim to change faulty parts. (2) Better stability and realibility with server-grade hardware. Cheaper prices for DIY components because lousier QA. (3) Possibly mirror the production environment so you match hardware not just software. (Hardware specific applications?)

Most managers likely just think about factor #2. :-)

I don't have any "standardised" excuse form for server procurement, but to know which gun to buy, you have to know what creature you wanna kill - you don't buy an elephant gun to kill rats. You need to specify what application(s) the server is meant to service, and also what the application is meant to do. Take rough estimates from your previous projects, based on development environment usage size.

Any recommendations for cheap servers?I'm just trying to gather information for servers which will be used to just store records and to be used in dental clinics,so fast uptime is not crucial.The amount of records it will hold won't be a lot,probably a few hundred megabytes worth of data.The server will be running MSDE 2000 and is linked to a PC running a customised software that will access the database.

Clinics can usually do good with departmental servers like HP Proliant tc serires or IBM x2 series. Without putting in the extras (RAID and tape) they can cost around $2.2K-3K. I can give you some old quotes to give you a gauge, but will need to revise them with current distributor prices.

Old quotes?I sure would appreciate it to get an approximate gauge of the pricing.

i am looking for a server now - and answer to your question is: the ususal motherboard is completle different to a server one. simply - desktop computer can do One job fast. but server is for multi jobs and realy high performans. even on a simple tasks you will see the huge difference.  and your home made asus-gigabyte mb will do less then a server intel mb, it is all about actual structure of mb system.