Months ago I decided to finally build my personal home lab. I decided to build mine so I can develop my skills and become more familiar with breaking servers. As a result, I allocated some budget for the project that does not exceed 1000 BHD ( about $2600). My requirements are a server enclosure ( Server Rack) that is no more than 30U, a single U used server and few switches and routers for the first phase.
In this blog post I will cover my experience of getting a used server in Bahrain. In other countries the experience will be totally different.
Getting the rack
I tried to get a server rack as cheap as possible. I was looking for a used worn out rack for month but no luck. After that, I scouted most IT shops in the country for an affordable one. However, the cheapest one I found was for about 150 BHD ($380). A godsend friend who works for an IT vendor in the region used his networking to allow me to have a new rack for close to free.
The used server
Buying Locally
After securing a rack to store the equipment I started looking for used servers. I chose getting a used one because I don’t need brand new server in the server lab. After some time I found a used server for about 1000 BHD, which is way above my budget. After giving up finding a used to for an affodable price in the kingdom, I looked for low end new server and I found one for an affordable price (Sort of).
Buying Online
Before going to buy the weak server, I googled for companies that sells refurbished servers. I found a chunk of them, but I decided to go for ServerMonkey. ServerMonkey sells refurbished hardware that is pulled from working environment then they refurbish them to give those hardware a second life. To my surprise server cost and shipping from The States to Bahrain is less than buying a refurbished one and the imported one is better and newer than the local one.
When I got my server the packaging was really good and saved the equipment for crashing with each other all the way from US to here. Installing the server in the rack went with no issues thanks to some videos on YouTube. Finally I connected my Server into my PDU.
Hemo’s Take
Unfortunately, there is not a single community that manages refurbishing used equipment in the country. Also retailer here should stop selling used equipment at a ridiculous prices. People who are buying these stuff are not business, but people building their home server labs. Be mercy on them.