10:00 AM
Paul B
Ever since my last company I've been interested in SuperMicro server systems. They are relatively inexpensive, yet just as powerful as their more expensive counterparts like HP and Dell. The only problem, if you consider this a problem, is that SuperMicro is not necessarily an out of the box solution. It's sold as a build your own solution. That being said, there are vendors that specialize in SuperMicro where you can get fully built systems.
Anyway, back to my last company. I had a really douchy boss, and an even douchier colleague. Both of them brought SuperMicro to my attention when they started bad mouthing them. They would talk about how cheap they are and how hard they are to put together. I decided to look into it myself and realized they were dead wrong. Well, dead wrong if you're not an idiot at putting computers together, or finding vendors that can do it for you. After looking into SuperMicro more I realized one could save a ton of money by moving to SuperMicro instead of buying high priced systems from HP.
At my current company I got my first opportunity to test my theory when I built a XenServer cluster using SuperMicro servers, and two iSCSI SAN's running on Ubuntu Linux also using SuperMicro servers. I was right, these servers have been very reliable, and the cost savings really earned me browny points with the CFO. Win Win!
Well I just found out that I am not the only one that really likes SuperMicro solutions. Apparently OpenDNS uses SuperMicro as well for their Hadoop clusters. Check out these pics from their Facebook page:
Do you use OpenDNS? Does the fact that they are successfully using SuperMicro in their environment ease your mind about the use of SuperMicro servers in your production environment? Let us know what you think in the comments!
