The server industry is an intensely heated market. With businesses as the primary customer base, the profit margins, competition, and stakes are high as thousands of equipment and part manufacturers aggressively try to one-up each other.
Is your company’s IT department in need of an upgrade? Well, before you buy Dell used server components from Netcon Solutions, let’s go into what new changes are coming to the industry. You might find your choices changing given current market circumstances.
Evolution of CPUs
Server CPUs need to be power efficient, capable of 24/7 operation, and reliable enough for the demands of the enterprise market. There is certainly no shortage of competitors either, with Intel, AMD, IBM, and Qualcomm as major players in the industry.
But while the goals are the same, the means have changed drastically. Process node size is an aspect of CPUs that affects space efficiency on the die; the smaller the node size, the better. Now that process node size has nearly reached a minimum due to manufacturing limitations in recent years, the new differentiators that affect CPU sales have switched to execution and architecture rather than node size.
Single-socket Servers
Driven by huge strides in CPU technology, servers have slowly transitioned away from dual-socket designs (ones with two CPUs running on the same logic board) to single-socket servers. Now that modern CPUs have core counts upwards of 32 and even more memory channels to scale, it makes sense from a power efficiency and complexity standpoint to have only one CPU operating in a server at a time.
Also, specialized computing is seeing a boost in popularity as tasks usually assigned to the CPU are now being offloaded to a GPU or network interface card. Keep that in mind when you buy your Dell used server.
Storage Upgrades
There are three major speed categories of storage drives in computing.
• The hard drive, a notoriously slow and loud but also low dollar-per-gigabyte ratio option found commonly in older machines.
• The SAS SSD, a considerably faster option that uses flash memory technology. With no moving parts and hugely speedier performance than traditional HDDs, SSDs have seen a huge adoption rate among not only servers but also consumer-grade products. Their high price, however, allows hard drives to keep a market in the budget and archivist category.
• The NVMe SSD, an even faster but even higher-cost alternative. Storage manufacturers soon found the previous SATA/SAS interface too small for newer drives and developed this standard in response that uses the PCIe bus instead.
From boot drives to large-capacity storage, it makes more sense now thanks to decreasing prices to adopt NVMe SSDs in your server over spinning hard drives.
A Focus on Security
Security has always been a consideration for companies ever since cybercrime has been impacting small and large businesses alike in recent years. Server manufacturers are quick to respond, with Dell offering end-to-end architecture-based encryption on their newer PowerEdge models.
However, cybercrime is always evolving to keep up, and CPU vulnerabilities are discovered nearly every few years. The next time you buy Dell used servers, try to choose models with specific security features.
Netcon Solutions | Buy Dell Used Servers & Parts | Toronto & the GTA
That’s a lot to consider, so why not make choosing your used component provider easy by contacting Netcon Solutions for your used servers and parts needs? Whether you want to buy Dell used servers or sell IBM used parts, Netcon Solutions is the trustworthy dealer that has been operating for over 20 years.
• The server market is continually changing. Innovations include wider adoption of faster storage technologies, the evolution of CPUs, and a higher awareness of server security.
• Even if you only buy Dell used servers for your company, these trends can impact your purchasing decisions.
• Netcon Solutions provides customer service and warranties for all its low-cost pre-owned equipment.