Server make recommendations

Does anyone have a particular reason to favour one server make over another? I'm currently looking towards Dell but would appreciate some feedback on the experience of others.

p.s. looking for a tower server rather than rack

All depends on how much you want to pay. If it's for business use the initial price shouldn't be a huge concern. (If it's for home use I'd get something second-hand off eBay, or just use, or build, a standard PC.)

We always used to buy IBM. I was tempted into buying a Dell once; then I realized why I always bought IBM! (In three words - after sales service.)

You looking for new? and do you want rack mount. I know where there are a good number of surplus ones available, mostly SuperMicros (which are worth a look too).

Personally HP all the way, but not everyones budget runs to that.

Drop a spec in here and I'll give you my 2p.

Thanks, it's for a small charity (so price is important) to run SBS with exchange and sharepoint. The spec I was looking at from Dell was a T300 tower for �745 with:

Base Quad Core Intel� Xeon� X3353, 2.66GHz, 2x6M Cache, 1333MHz FSB
Memory 4GB FB 667MHz FBD (4x1GB dual rank DIMMs) for 1 CPU
Optical Devices 48X DVD/CDRW Combo Drive with SATA Cable
1st Hard Drive 250GB, SATA, 3.5-inch, 7,200 rpm Hard Drive (hot-plug)
2nd Hard Drive 250GB, SATA, 3.5-inch, 7,200 rpm Hard Drive (hot-plug)
Raid Connectivity C11- Add-in PERC6i controller, 2-4 hot-plug Hard Drives - RAID 0
Chassis Options Chassis with Hot Plug Hard Drive and Non-Redundant Power Supply

I wouldn't do RAID 0 unless you have a robust backup regime. If you're after performance use SAS disks instead and back off the processor spec.

In reply to:

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price is important

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Depending upon how important uptime is to you you should consider the fact that Total Cost of Ownership is not directly related to purchase price. The reason that I recommended IBM, rather than Dell, in another post is a reliability issue. We had very little downtime with any of our IBM servers and any problems were resolved by IBM within a few hours. The one Dell server that we purchased was a completely different affair. We kept having problems with it and Dell support were most unhelpful. After many days of downtime I eventually resolved the problem by contacting our sales representative at Dell (we also bought desktops from them, which I would recommend) to say that I would never buy another Dell server. At that point they supplied a replacement; needless to say I never did buy another Dell server.

I understand your point about RAID 0 but I don't think SAS driver are really within the budget. Two 300gb SAS drives and controller adds about �500 to the cost with Dell. Could think about reducing the size to 146gb which adds about �250 to the price.

Thanks, I'll have a look at IBM ones. Initial price is important at the moment since the way the charity's income works with restricted and unrestircted money. The costs for this is coming out of restricted funds which can only be spent on specific things, we basically don't have any unrestricted to spend as we wish and so there's quite a tight ceiling on how much we have to set up the office.

If you do RAID0 in a business / commercial environment then frankly you are mad!

can you economise on the processor and use a single fast 15k rpm drive as the OS / swap drive and less speed critical large data volume on 7200 SATA300 drives ?