We're a small company planning to purchase three PowerEdge R660 servers. Each node would include two Intel Silver 4510 CPUs, 12×16GB RDIMM SR 6400MT/s modules, four 3.84TB SATA read-intensive hot-plug SSDs, and one 1.92TB NVMe read-intensive U.2 drive. The vendor quoted us $59,000 per server, while Dell's online list pricing for a similar configuration appears to exceed $100,000. Given the current prices and supply situation, does this quote seem reasonable, or is there still significant room to negotiate?
3 Answers
You should definitely get a quote from Supermicro or another storage-focused vendor such as 45Drives. They may offer similar CPU, memory, and storage capacity for less, although you’ll want to compare support, warranty coverage, management tools, and certification requirements. You can also ask whether non-branded memory and drives are acceptable, since those parts are often dramatically cheaper outside the original vendor’s warranty ecosystem.
Unfortunately, that sounds broadly consistent with current enterprise hardware pricing. Comparable systems from other major vendors are also several times more expensive than they were a few years ago, and availability can be as much of a problem as the price.
That’s helpful to know. The estimated delivery is still a few months away, so I’m glad to have a better sense of the market before we finalize everything.
If the workload and support requirements allow it, refurbished hardware could reduce the cost substantially. Older-generation systems can still provide plenty of memory and storage capacity, especially for virtualization, and some businesses have upgraded chassis and CPUs for a fraction of the cost of new equipment. Another option is to keep the existing servers and expand them with additional disks or memory if they’re still supported and meet your hardware compatibility requirements.
We currently have three R640s with 256GB of memory each. They’re still supported, so expanding those systems may be worth evaluating before committing to three entirely new nodes.
Good suggestions. We’ll compare those options, though we do need the systems to remain within our supported hardware requirements.