Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers
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@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Bean counters don't care about functionality or support. That's why bean counters should never be in the business decision line. They are looking at cost and are trained to look at cost. They don't know what it is for or what matters.
So how are these people actually good for business then?
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@dashrender said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Bean counters don't care about functionality or support. That's why bean counters should never be in the business decision line. They are looking at cost and are trained to look at cost. They don't know what it is for or what matters.
So how are these people actually good for business then?
A true bean counters job is to do bookkeeping (that's what a bean counter is) and report numbers to the decision makers, not be decision makers. Think of them like a calculator. Very handy to have, but you'd never have a calculator make your decisions.
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@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@dashrender said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Bean counters don't care about functionality or support. That's why bean counters should never be in the business decision line. They are looking at cost and are trained to look at cost. They don't know what it is for or what matters.
So how are these people actually good for business then?
A true bean counters job is to do bookkeeping (that's what a bean counter is) and report numbers to the decision makers, not be decision makers. Think of them like a calculator. Very handy to have, but you'd never have a calculator make your decisions.
Aww - we have one of those.. and they are constantly trying to inject themselves into the business decision making process.
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@dashrender said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@dashrender said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Bean counters don't care about functionality or support. That's why bean counters should never be in the business decision line. They are looking at cost and are trained to look at cost. They don't know what it is for or what matters.
So how are these people actually good for business then?
A true bean counters job is to do bookkeeping (that's what a bean counter is) and report numbers to the decision makers, not be decision makers. Think of them like a calculator. Very handy to have, but you'd never have a calculator make your decisions.
Aww - we have one of those.. and they are constantly trying to inject themselves into the business decision making process.
That's a weird thing for them to be trying to do. Maybe they don't like the career that they picked? Hopefully no one lets them.
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@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
A true bean counters job is to do bookkeeping (that's what a bean counter is) and report numbers to the decision makers, not be decision makers. Think of them like a calculator. Very handy to have, but you'd never have a calculator make your decisions.
Our beans counters are ALSO the decision makers...
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
A true bean counters job is to do bookkeeping (that's what a bean counter is) and report numbers to the decision makers, not be decision makers. Think of them like a calculator. Very handy to have, but you'd never have a calculator make your decisions.
Our beans counters are ALSO the decision makers...
Who are they specifically? The owners? The accountants? Who approves your purchases? Do they give you real reasons why you can't buy what you recommend? Have you asked them why you have a job if they aren't going to listen and follow your recommendations? (neither have I
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@dashrender said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@jimmy9008 said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Get the best price you can, within reasonable effort - it's a fair expectation from most companies.
Scott bills out at $250+/hr. If it takes him 2 hours to get a quote from Dell they are already $500 in the whole compared to xByte (where he can get a quote from their website in mins).
But it's really hard to believe that you could get an equal price, let alone superior price directly from Dell than you could from xByte, but in the interest of fairness, please post your quote so we can see them side by side.
I have my Dell price, but the xByte quote is gone. I don't keep 'losing' quotes. I asked xByte for a new quote earlier this week so we can compare. They couldn't match the same kit anymore, so quoted based on 'as close as they could get'. This order was a while back, so I guess they cant get the same kit anymore?
Anyway, this is based on the 'closest kit xByte could do to the T630s', which happens to be R730xd's according to them (which they said should cost less than the T630's anyway). That's based on their advice in the week. So, converted to GBP before VAT, xByte come in at £18,984.89 per box. That's £75,939.56 for the 4 servers. xByte say they cannot sell 2016 Datacenter in the UK, so this is total price excluding any OS.
Dell come in at £17,261.56 per box ex VAT, and for the order of 4 servers comes to £69,046.24. This includes Windows Server 2016 Datacentre on each server too.
So, for £6,893.32 less spend, you get the same SSDs, RAM, Networking, and Cores as xByte... but with 2016 Datacentre OS on each box too...
What would 4 x datacenter be on volume licensing? A quick search says on VL for 2016 Datacenter is £764.99 per 2 core pack ex vat [though, could be looking at the wrong part]. But... based on that 32 packs (to license to total number of cores = 64) is £24,479.68 ex VAT. That, plus the hardware cost difference is £31,373 less ex vat- If you ordered through Dell... for entirely new kit, not 'like new'.
31k is worth a few emails to 'haggle' IMO.[Company info removed etc. The Dell order also contains a couple of switch too, so need to take that off the total etc.]
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@jimmy9008 said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
If you ordered through Dell... for entirely new kit, not 'like new'.
The value difference is zero. Both are new. That one is legally labeled new and one is not has no business value.
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Now that you are in the UK, that's huge and that's why xByte doesn't make sense. They have to ship there. In the US, the price difference is huge and we get so much more from xByte.
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@scottalanmiller said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Now that you are in the UK, that's huge and that's why xByte doesn't make sense. They have to ship there. In the US, the price difference is huge and we get so much more from xByte.
We need a flag on ML saying country of origin...
Well, US or UK, these are probably coming from China or something anyway. So, both have shipping costs.
Would be great to see a third quote for somebody US based for that exact same xByte quote above... Just to see how much extra we are being charge over here compared to you...
Still, over here that 30k or so adds up, so when I say it can make sense to go to Dell at certain times of the year, it's based on my knowledge of the UK market. Most of the year, that Dell quite would be much higher and xByte probably makes sense. But their end of quarters, for us at least, can be 30k less than xByte.
A month before that Dell quite, their price was around double. It's because it was close to their end of year and their sales want to nail targets.
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@jimmy9008 said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
We need a flag on ML saying country of origin...
And another for country of discussion. I'm "from" the US but often working in Europe or LATAM so not always clear even for people that know where I am.
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@jimmy9008 said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
Well, US or UK, these are probably coming from China or something anyway. So, both have shipping costs.
No, they actually come from Florida. In the US there is no importation costs. I deal with xByte for global logistics and the markup going outside of the US purely due to duties and taxes is 30% - 100%.
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In the US, we also have SuperMicro that is easy to get. I mostly only look at Dell because of xByte. Dell themselves are so rarely competitive with SuperMicro that I would typically not even talk to them, xByte changes that equation enough that we mostly use Dell.
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I have an update on this thread, and more questions, lol. First of all, I got a new quote from xByte:
- Dell PowerEdge R730 Server 3.5" chassis with up to 8 drive bays (1)
- Intel E5-2620v3 2.4GHz/15M/1866MHz 6-Core 85W (1)
- Dell PE R730 Heat Sink (1)
- Dell 8GB DDR4 (2)
- PERC H730 Mini Mono Controller 1GB NV Cache (RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60) (1)
- 6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS Hard Drive (Dell Enterprise) (8)
- Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb Network Daughter Card (1)
- 4 PCIe Slots, 3 x8 and 1 x16 (1)
- iDRAC8 Enterprise (1)
- Dell 2U Sliding Ready Rails (1)
- Dell 750W Power Supply (2)
- Windows Server 2016 Standard 2-Core OLP (8)
- 5 Year Dell NBD Onsite Warranty (1)
Total with tax and shipping: $6360
My boss had me ask the xByte rep about the hard drive brand/model, and this is what the rep said:
"We have several to choose from, but the one we have most of are cobranded Dell/Toshiba hard drives. The Toshiba model # is MG04SCA60EE."
My boss then had me contact CDW to ask for a quote from them. Here's what I told the CDW rep:
"We're looking to buy a Dell PowerEdge server to act as a storage server. We were initially thinking of an R730, but would be open to an older server if that's more fitting for our needs (520 or 720). We'd essentially like to price out a server with the following bare minimum specs:
- A 8-12 bay (3.5") chassis
- A single Xeon 6-core CPU with heatsink
- 12GB or 16GB of RAM
- One PERC H710P RAID controller with 1GB NV Cache (or equivalent)
- At least eight 6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS drives
- One Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb NIC (or equivalent)
- iDRAC7 Enterprise
- Dell "sliding ready rails"
- 2x 750W PSUs
- Windows Server 2016
- 3-5 Year Warranty
Is that something you guys could put together for us? Our budget is around $6K"
Here's what he replied back with:
"I have the pricing back and am over 10K with this config. I know you said the budget was 6k.
Where can we cut back? The 8 6tb drives are almost 6k alone."I told him we got a quote from another vendor and said that the CDW quote was considerably higher.
The CDW rep said:
"Is it apple to apples or did xbyte use third party memory and drives? We are dell's largest partner so it should not be a large difference if truly apples to apples."
I'm not sure what to think of all this right now....
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
I have an update on this thread, and more questions, lol. First of all, I got a new quote from xByte:
- Dell PowerEdge R730 Server 3.5" chassis with up to 8 drive bays (1)
- Intel E5-2620v3 2.4GHz/15M/1866MHz 6-Core 85W (1)
- Dell PE R730 Heat Sink (1)
- Dell 8GB DDR4 (2)
- PERC H730 Mini Mono Controller 1GB NV Cache (RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60) (1)
- 6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS Hard Drive (Dell Enterprise) (8)
- Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb Network Daughter Card (1)
- 4 PCIe Slots, 3 x8 and 1 x16 (1)
- iDRAC8 Enterprise (1)
- Dell 2U Sliding Ready Rails (1)
- Dell 750W Power Supply (2)
- Windows Server 2016 Standard 2-Core OLP (8)
- 5 Year Dell NBD Onsite Warranty (1)
Total with tax and shipping: $6360
My boss had me ask the xByte rep about the hard drive brand/model, and this is what the rep said:
"We have several to choose from, but the one we have most of are cobranded Dell/Toshiba hard drives. The Toshiba model # is MG04SCA60EE."
My boss then had me contact CDW to ask for a quote from them. Here's what I told the CDW rep:
"We're looking to buy a Dell PowerEdge server to act as a storage server. We were initially thinking of an R730, but would be open to an older server if that's more fitting for our needs (520 or 720). We'd essentially like to price out a server with the following bare minimum specs:
- A 8-12 bay (3.5") chassis
- A single Xeon 6-core CPU with heatsink
- 12GB or 16GB of RAM
- One PERC H710P RAID controller with 1GB NV Cache (or equivalent)
- At least eight 6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS drives
- One Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb NIC (or equivalent)
- iDRAC7 Enterprise
- Dell "sliding ready rails"
- 2x 750W PSUs
- Windows Server 2016
- 3-5 Year Warranty
Is that something you guys could put together for us? Our budget is around $6K"
Here's what he replied back with:
"I have the pricing back and am over 10K with this config. I know you said the budget was 6k.
Where can we cut back? The 8 6tb drives are almost 6k alone."I told him we got a quote from another vendor and said that the CDW quote was considerably higher.
The CDW rep said:
"Is it apple to apples or did xbyte use third party memory and drives? We are dell's largest partner so it should not be a large difference if truly apples to apples."
I'm not sure what to think of all this right now....
They are being crushed by xByte, I'm sure. Bill (can't find his ML handle right now) bought third party SSD drives through xByte. Unfortunately they didn't end up being stable. As far as I recall - xByte did the right thing and replaced the drives with Dell branded SSD drives.
Branded not branded, not sure it really matters as long as you have a vendor standing behind you, which history has shown that xByte has.
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
I have an update on this thread, and more questions, lol. First of all, I got a new quote from xByte:
- Dell PowerEdge R730 Server 3.5" chassis with up to 8 drive bays (1)
- Intel E5-2620v3 2.4GHz/15M/1866MHz 6-Core 85W (1)
- Dell PE R730 Heat Sink (1)
- Dell 8GB DDR4 (2)
- PERC H730 Mini Mono Controller 1GB NV Cache (RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60) (1)
- 6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS Hard Drive (Dell Enterprise) (8)
- Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb Network Daughter Card (1)
- 4 PCIe Slots, 3 x8 and 1 x16 (1)
- iDRAC8 Enterprise (1)
- Dell 2U Sliding Ready Rails (1)
- Dell 750W Power Supply (2)
- Windows Server 2016 Standard 2-Core OLP (8)
- 5 Year Dell NBD Onsite Warranty (1)
Total with tax and shipping: $6360
My boss had me ask the xByte rep about the hard drive brand/model, and this is what the rep said:
"We have several to choose from, but the one we have most of are cobranded Dell/Toshiba hard drives. The Toshiba model # is MG04SCA60EE."
My boss then had me contact CDW to ask for a quote from them. Here's what I told the CDW rep:
"We're looking to buy a Dell PowerEdge server to act as a storage server. We were initially thinking of an R730, but would be open to an older server if that's more fitting for our needs (520 or 720). We'd essentially like to price out a server with the following bare minimum specs:
- A 8-12 bay (3.5") chassis
- A single Xeon 6-core CPU with heatsink
- 12GB or 16GB of RAM
- One PERC H710P RAID controller with 1GB NV Cache (or equivalent)
- At least eight 6TB 7.2K 3.5" 12Gbps NL SAS drives
- One Broadcom 5720 QP 1Gb NIC (or equivalent)
- iDRAC7 Enterprise
- Dell "sliding ready rails"
- 2x 750W PSUs
- Windows Server 2016
- 3-5 Year Warranty
Is that something you guys could put together for us? Our budget is around $6K"
Here's what he replied back with:
"I have the pricing back and am over 10K with this config. I know you said the budget was 6k.
Where can we cut back? The 8 6tb drives are almost 6k alone."I told him we got a quote from another vendor and said that the CDW quote was considerably higher.
The CDW rep said:
"Is it apple to apples or did xbyte use third party memory and drives? We are dell's largest partner so it should not be a large difference if truly apples to apples."
I'm not sure what to think of all this right now....
How much time have you put in to this now, including your higher ups time? At some point, you have to just move on and buy the thing...
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@jimmy9008 I hear where you're coming from, but until you've walked 5+ years in my shoes, maybe you should slow your roll a bit. This forum isn't about making sure that people hurry up and make a purchase, right? It's a forum that's geared towards helping other IT pros get the information they're asking for.
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@jimmy9008 I hear where you're coming from, but until you've walked 5+ years in my shoes, maybe you should slow your roll a bit. This forum isn't about making sure that people hurry up and make a purchase, right? It's a forum that's geared towards helping other IT pros get the information they're asking for.
Sure it is, but you've also done something that some around these parts are completely against - you've pitted two vendors against each other.
On top of that you -
but would be open to an older server if that's more fitting for our needs (520 or 720). We'd essentially like to price out a server with the following bare minimum specs:
So now you want CDW to do your IT for you. At least this is how Scott would see it. How is CDW supposed to know what your needs are? Your needs and CDWs needs are on opposite ends. They need to sell you the most stuff they can, your needs are to spend the least while getting the gear that accomplished your need/goal.
Is that something you guys could put together for us? Our budget is around $6K"
Where did this budget come from? It costs what it costs. Is there some wiggle room, sure, you can't say you need a formula 1 race car, then say, oh you have to do it on a $30K budget. I'm guessing the budget number of $6K came from the quote you got from xByte. But if you had started with Dell Direct, you might have thought your budget was more like $12K, making CDW look OK, and xByte look Awesome!
Queue @JaredBusch's music
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@dashrender All I can say at this point is "you have no idea what I'm dealing with at this company in terms of management perspective and expectation". I could spend another several paragraphs trying to defend myself and justify all the stuff I'm dealing with here, but I'm quite certain that none of you guys care to waste your time reading it, and it would actually just create more fuel for the fire that's already burning.
Cue the mangolassi elitist guillotine that lobs off Shuey's head
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@shuey said in Advice on building "storage servers" with two DL380 G7 servers:
@dashrender All I can say at this point is "you have no idea what I'm dealing with at this company in terms of management perspective and expectation". I could spend another several paragraphs trying to defend myself and justify all the stuff I'm dealing with here, but I'm quite certain that none of you guys care to waste your time reading it, and it would actually just create more fuel for the fire that's already burning.
Cue the mangolassi elitist guillotine that lobs off Shuey's head
Wasn't being disrespectful... was just highlighting that deliberation costs money.
