One of the mistakes some novice IT pros do is suggesting using high-end consumer hardware instead of Server grade hardware. They suggest using high-end consumer grade hardware because it has better performance with the price range. However, price tag is just a factor in calculating overall cost of a certain asset. In this post, we will see why server-grade hardware is more beneficial than high-end consumer hardware.

 

Designed to last longer and more reliable!!

Server hardware is designed to have a longer time span that consumer hardware, because servers in general stay in production for a longer time than consumer hardware. Moreover, servers are designed to be on 24/7, unlike personal machines that most people turn them off for hours daily.

Mean time between failure or MTBF is a unit that measure the average time a component will take to failure under optimal operation conditions. As an example, according to western digital WD Gold MTBF is 2.5 million hours.  On the other hand, consumer hard drives do not come with MTBF, however they tend to fail after 500 thousand hours.

Any enterprise will have more profit if they used their equipment for a longer time and less down time, because their ROI will be higher.

Fault tolerant

The other reason IT pro choose servers grade hardware over consumer grade hardware is its high fault tolerant and redundancy. As an example, servers come with two PSUs, to prevent downtime because of a dead PSU.

Fault tolerance allows devices to run even if one or more of its components is faulty. As a result, no service will be interrupted and sysadmins will be happy.

Support

Support provided to server grade hardware is often better than consumer grade hardware. Server grade hardware comes with better support packages, such as 24/7 support and on-site equipment replaced done by support representative. Moreover, vendor dedicate a certain specialist to large customers to ensure the representative is familiar with production environment and provide faster and better service.

 

Hemo’s Take

“It depends” is what is answer should be. As a system administrator, you should evaluate the value of each service and decide does it worth the support it comes with or not. Also think about the time and resource wasted from the down time.