I'm an infrastructure engineer at a company in France, and we've recently decommissioned a substantial amount of hardware. The batch includes around 60 Dell R620 servers and roughly a dozen R730s, most with 378 GB of DDR4 RAM. I also have a large quantity of healthy SSDs and HDDs that could be included.
I'm not familiar with selling used enterprise hardware, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to approach it. The R730s, RAM, and storage should still have some resale value, while the older R620s may be better suited for donation since DDR3-based systems probably aren't worth much commercially.
I'm open to selling individually, in smaller lots, or as one bulk package, depending on the balance between the return and the time involved. We're located a little south of Clermont-Ferrand, and the company can provide proper business-sale paperwork. I'd appreciate suggestions for European refurbishers, brokers, universities, associations, hackerspaces, or other organizations that might be interested.
5 Answers
Local marketplaces can work if you offer discounts for multiple units, but selling dozens of servers one at a time takes a lot of effort. Universities, associations, and hackerspaces may be good donation targets for the older machines, especially if pickup is possible. Recyclers are the fastest option for clearing everything, but usually provide the weakest return.
If you want to move everything quickly, approach established hardware brokers or refurbishing companies in France, Germany, or the wider European market. German resellers in particular handle a lot of this equipment. Just expect a bulk buyer or recycler to offer considerably less than you could get through individual sales.
The R730s are probably worth listing separately, especially because of the large memory configurations and the drives. Try contacting local IT refurbishers, small businesses, universities, and technical groups. Selling the higher-value parts individually will bring in more money, while the older servers can be offered for donation.
For donations, contact nonprofit technology groups, educational organizations, and community workshops directly. The older systems may still be useful for virtualization, training labs, or continuous-integration workloads even if their resale value is limited. Offering local pickup near Clermont-Ferrand could make the donation much easier to arrange.
A specialist enterprise-hardware broker may be willing to quote on the whole package, including the R730s, memory, and storage. It’s also worth checking whether you can sell to other businesses, since the company can issue the necessary paperwork. Be sure to advertise the exact memory module sizes and drive models, because those details can make a significant difference.
We have both 32 GB and 16 GB memory modules available rather than 64 GB sticks, but we can provide business documentation for a sale.
That’s the trade-off I’m trying to assess. One reseller already made a very low offer for the complete lot, so I may separate the newer systems and valuable components before deciding what to do with the rest.