Rack Mount Servers - Build them or Buy them?

This is the canonical question for "Should I build coomputing hardware myself?" questions.

I have put together countless PCs, but never a large server. The geek in me says build it, but the realist in me says let the manufacturer handle it when there is a problem. Ignoring the time penalty involved with the initial assembly time of a built one, which is a better solution? Have you ever run into a problem with a home build server that would have been solved easier/quicker/cheaper by going with a manufacturer? Are there any features that manufacturers give that aren't easily attainable with a home built server?

Solution 1:

Buy them. And buy them from alternative sources if you need to be frugal - Craigslist, Ebay, Dell Outlet, etc.

If you end up building them - go with SuperMicro - great gear.

But Commercial Servers will have better out of bandwidth management, better systems management, better support, etc.

And if you need to pinch pennies - use third party memory (i.e. Crucial) - its cheaper and just as good.

Solution 2:

Buy.

• Warranty.
• Engineering Design - heat, airflow
• Parts all guranteed to work together

We bought a server from a local white box store. worst server we ever had. Built exactly to our specs, but the RAID card didn't like the Motherboard. Ended up costing us more than the price of the server in strange errors, testing, rebuilding, ordering other cards, and more testing.