White box servers: fiction vs. facts
Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn and many other companies are realizing substantial savings using White Box servers assembled by a system integrator using components from market-leading manufacturers. White Box server components – CPU, Disk Drives, Memory, Power Supplies, etc. – are the same components used by big-name manufacturers in their servers.
Fiction: Big-Name Servers are the Best Option
In the past, a logo, such as Dell, HPE, or Lenovo, meant reliability and consistency of products and performance. The manufacturers behind the logos achieved this reputation through standard configurations and bundled features. Now, with the reality of Software Defined Infrastructures, the effectiveness of white boxes is at an all-time high. A big-name logo no longer holds much value. It is like comparing Advil with ibuprofen. The generic ibuprofen does the exact same thing as Advil – both reduce inflammation in the body – but Advil is more expensive.
Fact: White Boxes are Flexible and Less Expensive
Although it used to signify the best option, the big-name logo now has a new meaning – rigidity and higher cost. A White Box server will have many or all of the same internal components as a big-name machine with much lower system management costs. In addition, unlike the big-name manufacturers, White Box vendors build their machines to order — these vendors build white box servers to the user’s specifications exactly. This saves money and provides consistency for the end-user using uniquely specified components in the server.
Fiction: White Boxes are Built in Garages
The popular conception of white boxes in the past was that they were of a low build quality and were simply a mish-mash of disparate components that hobbyist threw together in a garage with little care for quality assurance. That may have been the case 20 years ago, but now white box vendors build white boxes with even more quality and with more customer-specific testing than machines from big-name companies.
Fact: White Boxes are Built with High Quality Standards
White boxes have come far from their roots as garage-built machines. They meet the highest standards in build quality, with custom configurations, software imaging, testing, and support. Big-name companies are large and have many customers, so they have to build standard configurations and process their machines quickly in order to meet demand. Big-name companies build their servers to high standards, but the lack of configuration options force customers to buy whatever configurations the vendor decides to offer. These configurations churn over time, and this often causes headaches for customers attempting to manage their technology roadmap. White boxes match or surpass the quality of the big name machines, while at the same time offering much more flexibility at a lower price.
The Facts are in: White Box Servers are the Next Wave Hardware
The compelling benefits of combining white box computing with software-defined applications are clear to the “Big Guys” and other cloud services providers who have deployed hundreds of thousands of White Box servers.
If you haven’t experimented with White Box servers and storage, you owe it to your company to spec out and purchase a few different configurations. White Box is not just an alternative to big-name servers – they are today’s preferred server solution.
