Need help quoting a server!!

[dave_the_nerd]

Counter-counter-point: don't play with other people's money, do that on your own dime. The customer is paying for a working product, not to train their integrator's employees.

The post I quoted made it sounds like you should never try anything new - that's not legit advice at all.

I generally am of the opinion that a prebuilt server is the way to go - but I work for a company that makes prebuilt servers and pay raises are at the end of the quarter, so... :$

In general, if you work in IT: never stop learning, and don't pass up an opportunity to learn something on somebody else's dime. At a certain point, your boss, your sales guys, and your client will have set forth a list of requirements that might not be the best solution, but it's your job to make it work anyway. (This happens to me a lot.) So... do it, suck it up, and make it work. Don't be all, "b-b-b-but warranties!" You are the warranty. Get started.

This is IT, you probably won't be working there in 3 years anyway.

Component compatibility for a system integrator is a solved problem anyway - the only "learning" is learning how to look up HCLs. If you aren't sure whether given RAM will work with a given motherboard, the answer is to read more freely available information on the internet, not to throw up your hands and say, "welp, I give up."

PCPartpicker is worthless for server hardware, by the way.

 

[ViviTheMage]

The post I quoted made it sounds like you should never try anything new - that's not legit advice at all.

I generally am of the opinion that a prebuilt server is the way to go - but I work for a company that makes prebuilt servers and pay raises are at the end of the quarter, so... :$

In general, if you work in IT: never stop learning, and don't pass up an opportunity to learn something on somebody else's dime. At a certain point, your boss, your sales guys, and your client will have set forth a list of requirements that might not be the best solution, but it's your job to make it work anyway. (This happens to me a lot.) So... do it, suck it up, and make it work. Don't be all, "b-b-b-but warranties!" You are the warranty. Get started.

This is IT, you probably won't be working there in 3 years anyway.

Component compatibility for a system integrator is a solved problem anyway - the only "learning" is learning how to look up HCLs. If you aren't sure whether given RAM will work with a given motherboard, the answer is to read more freely available information on the internet, not to throw up your hands and say, "welp, I give up."

PCPartpicker is worthless for server hardware, by the way.

Exactly, if you don't take the risk, you'll never learn. This is how people end up in help desk hell forever.

 

[mfenn]

The post I quoted made it sounds like you should never try anything new - that's not legit advice at all.

I generally am of the opinion that a prebuilt server is the way to go - but I work for a company that makes prebuilt servers and pay raises are at the end of the quarter, so... :$

In general, if you work in IT: never stop learning, and don't pass up an opportunity to learn something on somebody else's dime. At a certain point, your boss, your sales guys, and your client will have set forth a list of requirements that might not be the best solution, but it's your job to make it work anyway. (This happens to me a lot.) So... do it, suck it up, and make it work. Don't be all, "b-b-b-but warranties!" You are the warranty. Get started.

This is IT, you probably won't be working there in 3 years anyway.

Component compatibility for a system integrator is a solved problem anyway - the only "learning" is learning how to look up HCLs. If you aren't sure whether given RAM will work with a given motherboard, the answer is to read more freely available information on the internet, not to throw up your hands and say, "welp, I give up."

PCPartpicker is worthless for server hardware, by the way.

The amount of non or barely functional white boxes that we bought at my (former) employer(s) where the integrator said "but the HCL matches!" begs to differ. There's a huge difference between slapping a bunch of components together on a one-off and shipping it out to a customer and the engineering and testing that goes into a server from a Tier 1 OEM.

Also, I never said to stop learning. I said that if you're a system integrator, then you shouldn't learn with your customer's funds, assuming that you want to keep that customer.

If I'm the customer, I am paying you to know, I am not paying you to learn. Otherwise, what value are you adding? If I wanted to pay somebody to learn to build a server, I could just as easily point one of my own staff to Newegg and Provantage and have them order the parts.