Musings on hardware prices - opps

Tue Aug 23 12:46:58 PDT 2005

>>One of the disadvantages of small distributors like Acma/Malabs, is they 
>>    
>>
>
>yeah... they are 3rd or 4th level distrib... go to the bigger outfits
>that actually carry stock ...
>	- i buy from one distributor, that tends to have what i need
>	in stock that i can pick up within the hr
>  
>
Which distributor? The only large distributor I know that's easy to deal 
with is Ingram.. I believe
they bought everybody else.   Acma is a tier down from Malabs. I'd be 
happy to find out how to
work in-between MA & Ingram.

>for those that like bigger ( small shops ), yeah, they're arround,
>but they too are suffering from the use cheaper parts to increase
>margins problems ... 
>	- ie .. there's no margins in hw
>  
>
Hardware sucks. In a perfect world I'd have a $10M IBM Mainframe, and 
just provision
VMs for my customers, not have to deal with hardware. 

>its always a toss up of:
>
>price vs performance vs reliability   ( pick 2 of the 3 )
>
>and add brandname if you/the customers like to pay extra for that
>name brand hardware
>
>  
>
Unfortunately, this is a lot more of a grey area nowadays, even in the 
commodity
arena. Intel hardware sucks. Plain and simple, every cheap x86 box pales 
in comparison
of reliability and performance to big Iron.  Unfortunately, the pricing 
is several magnitudes
cheaper. If you're going with x86, then it's a given fact that pricing 
is paramount in your
purchasing decision.

On the low-end, I can buy 30 servers from Dell for the same price as 10 
IBM or HP's low-end
servers (I'm talking IBM's x336 or HP's DL14X line.. Not their better 
gear).  My assumption
with Dell is usually to expect the worst, 30% of servers to be in some 
state of failure at any
time. Even then, for the same price as IBM, I have 2x as many servers. 
As much as I despise
Dell's component choices and technical support, it's a financial AND 
technical decision dell is
making really hard.

>-----
>
>odd part ... 
>	- i havent seen any dead/broken ibm boxes ... 
>	- i havent seen too many dead/broken hp boxes
>	- i have seen too too too many dead/broken dells and compaqs
>
>  
>
Then you haven't worked in a large enough installation. Hardware dies. 
Commodity hardware is
cheap, no matter who is selling it to you. IBM's is the best . Their 
onboard server diagnostics is
awesome. Their MIBS are also the easiest to work with MIBS out of any of 
the PC server vendors.

You also pay 3x for it compared to dell, and twice what HP is on 
anything lower than about a
40 server purchase, going through a var, and waxing their cars. HP 
servers are awesome. The
iLO-2 (or whatever it's name is today) is  absolutely the best remote 
server management solution.
Unlike Dell's DRAC, it actually works, is reasonably fast, is browser 
independent for the remote
desktop, and is easy to deal with. Unfortunately, even a good VAR 
pushing a "big deal" letter through,
the price for equivalent gear tends to be about 80-120% higher than Dell.

>i have tons of free time ... bescause i do it my way ...
>
>hw is micky mouse ... and only 10% of the problem ...
>  
>

If you follow the thread, your statement here was responding to the 
software tools that
VALinux had written, not hardware.  And if you really do have so much 
free time to re-invent
the wheel, you should be selling more.

>>The whole building/writing everything in-house idea is nice in theory.. 
>>Actually, no it's not. Who
>>has the time for that kind of crap? 100 hours of development time versus 
>>$10k and instant
>>gratification, give me the instant gratification.
>>    
>>
>
>depends on ones skill level and where you want to spend your time
>and charge for it ...  hw is the cheapest part of any deal
>
>we charge for time spent in labor charges to config/setup...
>and hardware is free under the right terms/conditions
>  
>

Can you give me a list of your customers then? If you're doing things 
the hard way, building servers
by hand, writing your own tools instead of utilizing existing free and 
commercial ones, you are probably
not doing right by your customers.  I personally couldn't look a 
customer in the face, and tell them that
it makes sense for me to bill an extra 300 hours on a 300 server 
deployment, so that we could develop
new toolsets in house and build anything that we could have gotten 
pre-assembled and supported. Not
in a million years.  Maybe we're just talking about different sized 
projects.. This is, the LISA list, though,
so my assumption is that we're not.

>  
>
>>Fry's is for hobbyiests and bad hacks.
>>    
>>
>
><oops>
>i meant, buy stuff there only for your own use .. not for customers ...
></oops>
>
>  
>

Ahh, that makes a lot more sense then.

> Brent Chapman likes to say that 
>  
>
>>if he's buying it
>>from BlackBox, there is something wrong in the design.
>>    
>>
>
>there usually is something wrong with most peoples specs and
>requirements and pricing ... at least the ones i see
>  
>

Isn't it our job to gather requirements, and understand specs, then make 
recommendations? That's
certainly part of how I operate.

>>Rebate pricing is a joke.
>>    
>>
>
>yup
>  
>

The rebate thing is funny. I love all of the mom & pop ISPs that talk 
big about their services. They also talk about how great it is to use 
fatwallet.com
to buy hard drives and components with rebates and price matches..  I 
like to call them up, give them a spec
on 100+ servers and ask what their deployment timeframe would be like, 
hear their jaws drop and their words fumble.

>>Sure you can get good pricing on a hard drive 
>>here or there.. so what? I walk
>>into fry's and ask for 50 servers,
>>    
>>
>
>hopefully, nobody buys more than 1 of anything at fries ...
>
>me thinks you're entertaining yourself by mixing consumer stuff vs
>industrial strength goods 
> 
>  
>
>>Yeah. If you have a 1K server order, you have no need to nickel and 
>>dime, all you have to do is set your price
>>and walk away if the vendor flinches.
>>    
>>
>
>that's my point ...  esp when they dont know what parts to buy
>from where  and how much each retailer/distributer sells each item
>  
>
I think you put a lot of faith on parts selection. Building your own servers
is never a good idea, in my opinion, for a production infrastructure.

Michael T. Halligan
Chief Technology Officer
-------------------
BitPusher, LLC
http://www.bitpusher.com/
1.888.9PUSHER
415.724.7998 (Mobile)
415.520.0876 (Fax)