How I am playing with enterprise tech and not going broke

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Jeggs101

Jeggs101

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Dec 29, 2010
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I saw @Marsh posted something I've seen many times here. I wanted to share how I've managed to use this (great) site and not go broke in the process.

First the rules of the game:
  1. Refuse to buy new hardware, except in select instances. For example, anything going to a datacenter for work, I always buy new because I don't want old fans and PSUs
  2. Don't buy anything that is ancient. Nobody will want to buy it from you and it will sit unable to be sold. Xeon 5400 and older, Opteron almost anything and getting close to Xeon 5500 unless it's low power chips
  3. If buying to play with technology, always resell it within 3-6 months. I've found that keeping stuff for a year only works sometimes. C6100's were a good example where I made a lot of money off the ones I kept for 18 months. That was total luck though.
  4. When buying used, if you can get yesterday's enterprise for less than today's new, that is a good deal. For example, all of these S3500, S3700, SAS2/SAS3 SSD deals. Some new drives are faster, but in most cases if I'm keeping things, I want them to last. Some of the deals in here for enterprise drives that cost less than mid-range consumer of today, it is an easy decision
  5. Use the Great Deals forums here. Bar none the best deals for those of us who want to have home/ work labs with different tech at low costs. When I'm buying there used, and resell after a few months I basically end up getting to use the hardware and sometimes make 10-15% or lose 10-15% but it basically evens out.
  6. Keep gear in good condition. I once dropped a Dell 10Gb switch. That was an expensive mistake.
  7. Budget what you want and what you need. I've got no issues with spending money on production gear (especially in Great Deals.) Where I've gotten myself in trouble is going out of budget and keeping gear I didn't need to. Do I really NEED a 16TB SAS SSD shelf? For $5000 it is awesome but what am I really doing on it that I need that much SSD space? I ended up selling it for $6000 and made $1000 but if I had sold a month or two earlier I probably would have gotten an extra $400-500.
  8. Test gear thoroughly when it arrives. I once purchased 4x 8GB DDR3L RDIMMs. Two didn't work but I didn't have time to plug them in for three weeks. Seller said too bad so sad.
  9. Anything you buy new get cash back for. Newegg sells the same stuff in most cases on ebay at the same price. If I buy off the ebay listing I don't pay the "rush processing fee" ever and stuff ships fast. I get 1% back on ebay bucks and another 1% back from my credit card. I looked at my 2014 purchases and it was about 1.75% cheaper to buy through ebay versus NewEgg unless NE had some strange special. I won't get a credit card just for NE's specials so I'm often left buying less than that. Best part: using ebay bucks gets you more ebay bucks.
  10. You can resell locally sometimes for a LOT! Some of the better sales I had were local ones on Craigslist. I usually don't post stuff I have for sale on here just because this is a source of awesome deals, not a great place to sell for top dollar.
I hope that helps people. I ended up spending a net of $300 and got to play with an enormous amount of hardware and software over the past year. Thank you to all the STH'ers for making this possible.
 
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NeverDie

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Jan 28, 2015
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Jeggs101 said:
For example, all of these S3500, S3700, SAS2/SAS3 SSD deals. Some new drives are faster, but in most cases if I'm keeping things, I want them to last. Some of the deals in here for enterprise drives that cost less than mid-range consumer of today, it is an easy decision
Click to expand...
What is it about used enterprise drives that makes them last longer than new mid-range consumer? Everybody seems to know, but I never found the posting that explained it. Lately I've been buying Samsung 850 EVO's, because the prices have fallen so low, but maybe I shouldn't be.
 
D

DolphinsDan

Member
Sep 17, 2013
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@Jeggs101 Super post man.

NeverDie said:
What is it about used enterprise drives that makes them last longer than new mid-range consumer? Everybody seems to know, but I never found the posting that explained it.
Click to expand...
A few things. enterprise drives typically have power loss protection, slc or mlc nand, higher quality NAND (eMLC for example) and therefore higher write endurance. They're also designed for lower afr and lower uber. You'll see 10^-17 as the uber on most SAS drives while consumer ones are 10^-15 or -16. If you read the bottom of the front page's hitachi review, they are 0.44% AFR which is awesome.

Also SAS drives have dual port controller, or most of them do. That means that you can make HA disk shelves with them.

Finally, SAS SSDs anecdotally at least, tend to work on SAS controllers better.They don't work on SATA at all but SAS drive to SAS controller (or Expander to controller) is a more reliable path since you don't have translation.

TLC against eMLC SAS for the same money is an easy decision.
 
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T_Minus

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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Don't be afraid to msg ebayers asking for deals even if they don't have "MAKE OFFER". I've gotten some great deals this way. Sometimes you have to go back and forth 2 times or more to get where you want but it works. Think of it like negotiating in a tourist city in Mexico.
 
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PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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Also - have some Paypal balance or credit flexibility available so that you can jump on deals when they come up. The best deals are opportunistic. You need to be able to pull the trigger without fear, especially when really good deals can almost always be re-sold quickly if you make a mistake. Often at a profit.
 
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Patrick

Patrick

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Hey - this is a great post! Thank you for making the list.
 
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NeverDie

Active Member
Jan 28, 2015
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DolphinsDan said:
@Jeggs101 Super post man.



A few things. enterprise drives typically have power loss protection, slc or mlc nand, higher quality NAND (eMLC for example) and therefore higher write endurance. They're also designed for lower afr and lower uber. You'll see 10^-17 as the uber on most SAS drives while consumer ones are 10^-15 or -16. If you read the bottom of the front page's hitachi review, they are 0.44% AFR which is awesome.

Also SAS drives have dual port controller, or most of them do. That means that you can make HA disk shelves with them.

Finally, SAS SSDs anecdotally at least, tend to work on SAS controllers better.They don't work on SATA at all but SAS drive to SAS controller (or Expander to controller) is a more reliable path since you don't have translation.

TLC against eMLC SAS for the same money is an easy decision.
Click to expand...
I can see the value in those benefits if comparing a new enterprise SSD against a new mid-range consumer SSD. Aside from cost, it sounds like a no-brainer. However, because cost is the issue, the OP was suggesting that used enterprise SSD is still better than new mid-range consumer SSD.

I have nothing against used merchandise per se. In fact I recently purchased some used ECC memory on Ebay at what I felt was a great price. However, because SSD's can wear out, this seems more like buying used tires than used RAM. How do you avoid buying a used enterprise SSD that's almost entirely worn out and therefore far worse than a new mid-range consumer SSD? Is the amount of wear typically disclosed, or do you just try to infer the worst case amount of wear based on the SSD model number, how long it has been on the market, and typical wear rates?
 
Patrick

Patrick

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NeverDie said:
I have nothing against used merchandise per se. In fact I recently purchased some used ECC memory on Ebay at what I felt was a great price. However, because SSD's can wear out, this seems more like buying used tires than used RAM. How do you avoid buying a used enterprise SSD that's almost entirely worn out and therefore far worse than a new mid-range consumer SSD? Is the amount of wear typically disclosed, or do you just try to infer the worst case amount of wear based on the SSD model number, how long it has been on the market, and typical wear rates?
Click to expand...
Well, take the 800GB SanDisk Optimus Ascends purchased for around the same price as the 800GB Intel S3500's.

800GB S3500: 450TBW (a LOT of data actually)
800GB Ascend: 10DWPD = 8TB/ day x 5 years x 365 days/ year = 14.6PBW

If you have a 2 year old Ascend, you would essentially need to have 14.6PB - 0.45PB = 14.15PB written over two years which is just over 19DWPD, every day for two years to have the same amount of endurance left as the S3500.

The higher end eMLC/ SLC drives have so much endurance that it is extremely unlikely a 1-3 year old drive will be worn past what a consumer drive has left.

There is an element of faith here, but there are also some great deals out there.
 
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PithyChats

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Feb 3, 2015
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If I may add one -

11. Don't get hung up on a deal / part. You will miss out on a great deal; you will wish you had bid higher/sooner/more aggressively. It is easy then to overbid/overbuy when the next deal comes alone. There are always more deals, no matter how good this deal was, another will come along.
 
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