No, you can’t walk all over them. Our PowerEdge servers are stress-tested for natural disasters, but I digress.
I recently had a conversation with a cobbler about the construction of his boots and what differentiated his product from some of his lower-priced competitors. He emphasized the importance of a good pair of shoes constructed with good materials that move with your feet and stand ready to endure the occasional repair. After this conversation, I got to thinking about the relationship between shoes and servers, as one does.
I found myself talking to the cobbler that day because I, like many people, wear my boots into the ground, quite literally, before I make the trip to the shoe store. However, by purchasing “white box” boots and wearing them down, I was unnecessarily subjecting myself to foot pain and sole blowouts. Bringing this back to servers, I was making the same mistake as 40% of companies do by ignoring the need to refresh until it is too late.
So how exactly are servers like a pair of shoes?
- Servers are the bedrock of your core operations and play a huge role in your day-to-day performance
Your servers may seem fine after four years of use and even perform well during day-to-day tasks, but it’s not Carl from accounting’s email archive that keeps you up at night – it’s your company’s mission-critical applications that do. Your servers, like shoes, are always running in the background. You probably won’t give servers much thought unless something goes wrong because you just accept that they will get you where you want to go.
There is a myth circulating that servers are a commodity. If that is true, then shoes are a commodity as well. Sure, technically you can walk in any shoe, but you and I both know that we don’t want to just walk in shoes. They need to support our feet, mold to our gait, and not fall apart. Every. Single. Day. So, in that respect, servers are in no way a commodity. Construction, performance, and service matter in servers and boots. Construction, performance, and service don’t matter in true commodities like corn and oil.
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Trusted materials and construction matter
“White box” boot companies cut corners under the hood by swapping in cheaper materials, failing to vet vendors, and ignoring customer needs throughout the lifecycle of the shoe. Three months later, you’re running to a meeting and your heel comes unglued.
While your servers aren’t held together by glue (at least I hope not. If so, we should talk…), the analogy still holds. Dell PowerEdge servers are assembled from a trusted supply chain of vendors carefully monitored with your performance and security top of mind. We don’t cut corners in our own data centers, so we certainly will not cut corners in yours.
When you purchase a Dell PowerEdge server, much like a good pair of boots, your relationship with us continues well beyond the purchase. With our OpenManage software and iDRAC BMC, we are with you every step of the way, ensuring your servers are operating at peak performance when it matters most. If something goes wrong, we are here to get you back up to speed.
Of course, even the best servers and boots need a refresh due to changing times. If your toe is poking out or those Spice Girls platform boots just aren’t your style anymore, you’ve probably waited too long to refresh your boots. If you are slogging through data-intensive AI applications on a four-year-old server, you probably should have refreshed last year. But no worries, Dell Technologies is there to get you plugged in, back up, and running.
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Good servers won’t last forever, but they will adapt to fit your needs
A good pair of shoes will mold to your foot and flex throughout the day depending on your activity. A good server will do the same.
PowerEdge servers scale to your needs, freeing up more space to run more critical applications or helping you reduce your data center footprint. Further, our kinetic infrastructure moves us closer to full composability by running the right resources for the right workloads as your business needs fluctuate. What does all this mean? Your data center will flex like a shoe, hugging the sides of your feet, providing comfort and preventing blisters from morning to night.
So, in conclusion…
Don’t let your servers wake you up in the middle of the night with blisters and foot pain. Refresh regularly with trusted Dell PowerEdge servers – optimally every three years.
To learn more about PowerEdge, visit dellemc.com/servers, or join the conversation on Twitter @Dellservers.
