[gorkish]

The most interesting thing here is the discussion about using vendor hardware instead of their own bespoke stuff.

My takeaway is that it's still essentially impossible to negotiate anywhere close to a fair price with commodity server vendors until you are buying hundreds of machines, and then only if you are capable of demonstrating that you are willing to design and build them yourself. And yet despite this, it's still cheaper than cloud even paying advertised prices.

Where do regular people buy servers without insane markup if you need say 10-20? Used to be I could actually buy supermicro barebones, but that ended a really long time ago.

[aaronax]

You get two VARs, one with Dell and one with HP. Then a couple back and forth negotiation rounds and you will be paying 40-50% of MSRP. Or even try to do it direct with your Dell/HP reps, since VARs are of dubious value.

[gorkish]

I know how to get to the price; it's just an incredible pain in the ass.

[prirun]

> Where do regular people buy servers without insane markup if you need say 10-20?

IMO, for a small number of servers, the insane markup isn't a huge cost of business so doesn't matter that much.

[lostlogin]

It’s a pity there isn’t a way for several buyers to pool their purchasing power.

[lazide]

2-3x of 1 is still in the same order of magnitude and unlikely to matter.

[ComputerGuru]

At that scale, either pay it or buy off-lease equipment.