Buying servers?
iigs: We have a smattering of 100-150 HP DL380s and BL460c blades. We've seen approximately a 5% infant mortality rate (DOA or issues in the first 90 days). Depending on the channel HP's custom configurations come as a base and add on accessories -- if you order a dual 5160 DL380 with 32G of ram and 4x146g SAS you might get a preassembled 1x5160 4G 1x146 and a CPU, 14 2g DIMMS, and 3 disks, each in a separate shipping carton. You then spend about one person day per two computers unpacking individual components from cardboard and shipping foam boxes and installing CPUs, DIMMs, and disks. It's not my favorite thing to do, and it means that you only get about three computers per pallet. It's also, of course, not burnt-in beforehand, so you get to rack and memtest them for a day or two yourself.In contrast we've had really good luck with a regional whitebox VAR -- they would assemble Intel reference platforms and Supermicro systems, burn them in, and ship them, assembled, in the one box the case came in. As far as I know we've had closer to a 1% failure rate over three years with these (exclusive of HD failures but not environmental, over-heat, issues).On balance it's a tough call, because HP (and I assume Dell) have a much slicker lights-out-management solution than the last IPMI demo I saw. Maybe the whiteboxes have improved, but I assume the HP machines are still easier to support.