The ideal server for a small business will be cost effective above all else. Yes, the hardware will need to provide a respectable performance baseline, and it will need to be scalable to some extent, but finding the right combination of price and performance is the ultimate goal. Fortunately, there are many options for a company owner to choose from, and owners can always go with refurbished equipment instead. Refurbished hardware can provide a perfect network infrastructure solution for most companies, regardless of their size.
What server is ideal for a small business?
There are several brands that produce a range of hardware of varying sizes and performance levels. HP’s Proliant, Dell’s PowerEdge, Cisco’s UCS, and Oracle’s SPARC series are all top choices, though the Proliant and PowerEdge offer the most choices for non-enterprise applications. For example, the R620 is a simple 1U piece of equipment that can provide up to 768 GB of RAM and comes with the Xeon E5-2600 processor, which can be made with up to eight cores and up to three GHz of processing frequency. This is more than adequate for most companies, and there are plenty of similar options if a company needs a little more punch.
Network hardware can come in several forms, including tower, rack, or blade form factors. Towers look like traditional desktops and can provide a lot of power if outfitted. However, they tend to take up more space than rack and blade hardware and are tougher to manage because they can’t be stacked on top of each other. That being said, a tower can be a perfect server for a small business because they tend to be on the lower end price wise, and if they need to be scaled up, there are conversion kits that can turn a tower into rack hardware. While most companies have moved on to rack and blade hardware, towers still have their place, and that place is usually in more modest spaces.
Rack and blade hardware are both highly scalable, with blade hardware the more compact of the two. They cannot, however, be operated on their own, and require a special cabinet to house them and connect to the rest of the network. A hardware cabinet can accommodate many pieces of equipment into a rigid footprint, so as they scale up and offer more power, the company doesn’t have to carve out more room for the infrastructure. They are ideal server options for a small business that plans on growing quickly in the near future.
Whether a company goes with a tower, rack, or blade, refurbished hardware is often the right choice for a non-enterprise application. Refurbished hardware provided by a reputable seller offers comparable power to a new piece of hardware, and can be customized to the company’s preferences, allowing them to integrate the hardware right away. For the demanding company that wants performance, price and convenience, a refurbished piece of equipment can’t be beat.