Buyers compare server quotations on the processor, the memory and the drives, because those are the lines with the big numbers. Suppliers know this. The result is that competitive quotations converge on those three lines and diverge everywhere else.
The six lines that actually decide it
- Rails and mounting. Sliding rails, cable management arms and rack ears are frequently omitted, and equally frequently proprietary. A rack of servers without rails is a rack of servers on the floor.
- Optics and cables. The switch is quoted; the transceivers, DACs and fibre sometimes are not. On a leaf-and-spine build this line alone can move a quotation by a tenth.
- Power. Whether the power supplies are redundant, whether they match your PDU connector, and whether power cords of the right type and length are in the price.
- Support term. One year on-site is not three years next-business-day. Two quotations with different support terms are not comparable and the difference is real money.
- Software and licences. Out-of-band management often has a licensed tier. RAID features, hypervisor sockets and management suites are each capable of appearing after the order.
- Freight, insurance and duty. Ex-works from another continent is a different number from delivered to your data hall.
Questions worth asking every supplier
| Ask | What a weak answer sounds like |
|---|---|
| Which part number, exactly, per line? | A category name, or a model family without a suffix. |
| New, new sealed, or refurbished — per line? | “All our equipment is fully tested.” |
| Where is each line coming from? | “Our supply chain”, or silence. |
| Is the lead time confirmed or estimated? | A single date for the whole order. |
| Who holds the warranty, and for how long? | “Manufacturer warranty applies.” |
| What is the price if I order in six weeks? | “The same”, on a quotation with no validity date. |
On lead times
A quotation that gives one delivery date for twenty different lines has either been padded to the longest line, which costs you weeks, or it has been written to the shortest, which costs you the schedule. Lead times belong per line, and the ones that are estimates should say so.
A note on the cheapest quotation
It is often the right one. The point of the list above is not that the cheap quotation is a trap; it is that until the six lines are matched, you do not yet know which quotation is cheapest. Ask for them, in writing, from everyone including us.