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| Purchasing a server can be one of the most significant IT purchases facing your company. Getting it right the first time through helps you get the largest possible return on investment (ROI) while reducing the difficulties encountered with a purchase gone wrong. This article covers common server buying mistakes that you can avoid with a little know-how and consideration. |
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| Business demands often make it difficult, at best, to find time to research server specifications and vendor offerings. Just as you finish one deadline or address an unexpected problem, another comes up quickly. By the time you really need new equipment, you're in a crunch. |
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| Regardless, you must spend the extra effort and time to thoroughly understand the tasks you need a new server to perform. File sharing and backup, for example, don't require nearly the processing power as a server that hosts an email system or databases. In addition, determining your storage needs is essential. If you anticipate that an upcoming project could push your current storage availability to its limits, don't buy a server with internal storage only. You'll need the flexibility of some type of external storage to meet future growth. |
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| Consider what you need today and within the next year or two, and then compare several configurations from several vendors. |
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| Don't buy a server based only on price. There are many factors that contribute to the price of a server, and support is one of them. If you've been consistently too busy to adequately research servers, you might be too busy in the future to provide adequate support. |
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| Many companies buy a generic, bare-bones server to reduce their initial investment. However, this can increase the time your support staff spends getting the server up and running, and performing ongoing maintenance and upgrades. It can also result in hardware compatibility problems that plague an implementation. Getting a complete unit that's tested for compatibility and reliability, and includes a good support package, enables support staff to focus on more pressing business problems. |
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| Unfortunately, even though price shouldn't be your primary consideration point, it does demand attention. HP Finance is ready with several options, including both lease and finance plans. Take advantage of HP's expertise to help you find the best way to get the right technology in-house. |
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| Your production server should use server-specific processors rather than advanced desktop PC processors. Server-specific processors are designed to support the performance and data throughput required in a server. Examples of these processors include dual- or quad-core Intel Xeon, Intel Core2 Duo, Intel Celeron, Intel Itanium 2 Montecito and AMD Opteron processors. In addition, a high-performance server using only a single embedded processor generally doesn't provide the computing power needed for high-end applications. |
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| It's a good idea to establish that the hardware you intend to purchase is compatible with your desired operating system. Certain processors, for example, work best with certain operating systems. |
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Assessing the management tools |
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| Even with a server that has the specifications (processor, memory, drive bays and so on) you need, you can spend more money and effort than necessary by using inadequate management tools. Consolidated, easy-to-use and comprehensive management software is a key contributor to the ROI of a rack server or bladed environment. |
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| The bottom line is that it shouldn't take you 10 clicks to get to useful screens. |
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| Good management software should enable you to: |
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Monitor and manage your entire IT infrastructure (physical and virtual) from a single console. |
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Provide an easy-to-use web-based interface for rapid deployment of standard server configurations and software builds. |
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Support seamless migrations, and vulnerability and patch management. |
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| You must select a server based on your current needs in addition to the foreseeable future. This requires scalability, which generally means scaling up or out. Let's say you've decided to buy a tower server to meet a business need today. However, your customer base expands rapidly in six months due to a successful sales campaign. Now you're considering a customer resource management (CRM) system to meet the needs of your long-time clients and the new customers, and continue capturing new leads. Your recently purchased server can't support the new system, so you're back to researching a new server solution and spending additional money. |
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| Spending a little more money up front to ensure flexibility and future-proof your server provides a much better ROI over the long term. |
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| Most SMBs need a solution that simply runs their applications, is reliable and doesn't involve hours on the phone getting help with IT-related problems. Your vendor should be locally available to support your hardware, and be willing to fix problems rather than just patch them by throwing more hardware or software into the mix (at your expense). Therefore, you must take the time to carefully review vendors' support packages and hardware warranties before you make a purchase. |
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| If you can't clearly determine a vendor's support and service offerings, look for another vendor. |
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