Does anyone know about companies that build servers for customers?

[Eeglis]

Hi!

 

I'm looking to find documents, researches, companies, whatever regarding server deployments. More specifically, if a customer orders a server, for example for a web store. I'd like to read on how the process goes.

 

If anyone could point me toward the direction, I would be thankful.

[Slayerking92]

Company who need server: orders one.

 

Company who makes servers: collects payment and sends out server

[Eeglis]

2 minutes ago, Slayerking92 said:

Company who need server: orders one.

 

Company who makes servers: collects payment and sends out server

Well, in simple terms yes.

 

But I'm looking for some literature on the topic. For example, if a web shop needs a server, they most likely need some sort of operating environment. So I'm wondering how are they tailored for different customers.

[Needfuldoer]

Large companies don't build whitebox servers out of off-the-shelf parts, they get prebuilt servers from an OEM like Dell, HPE, or Levovo that come with a bumper-to-bumper warranty (and usually a service contract). They'll either pick what they need, or communicate their expectations to a sales representative who will build something appropriate within their budget.

 

If they're buying an appliance made for a specific task, most of the time the software vendor will slap their logo on a Dell, HPE, or SuperMicro box and set their custom software stack up on top of it. 

 

Of course this assumes they're hosting services on-premises at all.

 

 

[jde3]

It's a little different everywhere but usually a business will have a contract with either a hardware vendor (say dell or hp) or they will have a cloud platform such as AWS or Azure.

 

A request will be sent to a systems engineer to build a solution to whatever problem they are looking to solve. That includes OS and software. They generally will have some platform standardized for their environment but the solution might need to be unique depending on the constraints.

[Eeglis]

28 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Large companies don't build whitebox servers out of off-the-shelf parts, they get prebuilt servers from an OEM like Dell, HPE, or Levovo that come with a bumper-to-bumper warranty (and usually a service contract). They'll either pick what they need, or communicate their expectations to a sales representative who will build something appropriate within their budget.

 

If they're buying an appliance made for a specific task, most of the time the software vendor will slap their logo on a Dell, HPE, or SuperMicro box and set their custom software stack up on top of it. 

 

Of course this assumes they're hosting services on-premises at all.

 

 

Yeah, that much I know.

 

I'm looking for the appliance vendor's perspective. How are they implementing their appliance onto the server? Do they tailor their software for each customer? Do they just slap on the same VM on every server? How about project specifics?

[Eeglis]

29 minutes ago, jde3 said:

It's a little different everywhere but usually a business will have a contract with either a hardware vendor (say dell or hp) or they will have a cloud platform such as AWS or Azure.

 

A request will be sent to a systems engineer to build a solution to whatever problem they are looking to solve. That includes OS and software. They generally will have some platform standardized for their environment but the solution might need to be unique depending on the constraints.

Well, maybe the web store was a poor example. How about an offline SCADA server? Is there any literature regarding that? They must've made some sort of a routine out of their work, and not simply building the system from the ground up each time they receive an order?

[jde3]

7 minutes ago, Eeglis said:

Well, maybe the web store was a poor example. How about an offline SCADA server? Is there any literature regarding that? They must've made some sort of a routine out of their work, and not simply building the system from the ground up each time they receive an order?

Depends on the problem, usually they have a standard platform and may use automation tools such as Chef to deploy it.

Say they want a NTP server (for simplicity), well a system engineer would determine the performance needed for that an choose a hardware or virtual hardware platform then they would take their standard OS, say RHEL, Ubuntu, SLES or perhaps FreeBSD Unix (those are the most typical used ones) and configure the NTP daemon. Then that system would be handed off to operations after a review process.

[Eeglis]

2 minutes ago, jde3 said:

Depends on the problem, usually they have a standard platform and may use automation tools such as Chef to deploy it.

Say they want a NTP server (for simplicity), well a system engineer would determine the performance needed for that an choose a hardware or virtual hardware platform then they would take their standard OS (say RHEL, Ubuntu, SLES or perhaps FreeBSD Unix) and configure the NTP daemon. Then that system would be handed off to operations after a review process.

Ok, this Chef seems interesting.

 

Let's say that in this case there is a company that specializes in a software that they have. And they deploy their software on Windows server. How would they usually deploy and configure these project specific settings, like passwords, IPs etc? Is there some sort of automation for that too?

[jde3]

6 minutes ago, Eeglis said:

Ok, this Chef seems interesting.

 

Let's say that in this case there is a company that specializes in a software that they have. And they deploy their software on Windows server. How would they usually deploy and configure these project specific settings, like passwords, IPs etc? Is there some sort of automation for that too?

My understanding is Windows is more difficult to automate. It's also not used very much but it varies from shop to shop. For instance I manage a lot of Unix systems. There may be windows only shops out there but not even Microsoft is like that so idk. Being a Unix/Linux admin I don't get those kinds of jobs. Passwords and such are usually provided by an authentication system like LDAP.

[Jarsky]

11 minutes ago, Eeglis said:

Well, maybe the web store was a poor example. How about an offline SCADA server? Is there any literature regarding that? They must've made some sort of a routine out of their work, and not simply building the system from the ground up each time they receive an order?

 

You're talking about a Solution Architect. 

 

It is not typically the vendors responsibility to outline your requirements. 

You give them the requirement, and their sales agent, or if youre a large customer, an account manager will work with their team and come back with the system and support contract. 

The large ones like Dell, HPE, etc...do have solution architects but it'd probably be cheaper and often better for support, to have your own even if its a contract basis. 

 

 

Or when you say Appliance, do you mean Application? Appliance refers to the hardware itself....

[jde3]

Also Solution Architect

Titles.. fancy word for systems engineer. (haha)

[Eeglis]

2 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

 

You're talking about a Solution Architect. 

 

It is not typically the vendors responsibility to outline your requirements. 

You give them the requirement, and their sales agent, or if youre a large customer, an account manager will work with their team and come back with the system and support contract. 

The large ones like Dell, HPE, etc...do have solution architects but it'd probably be cheaper and often better for support, to have your own even if its a contract basis. 

 

 

Or when you say Appliance, do you mean Application? Appliance refers to the hardware itself....

Oh, in that case I mean Application. Sorry, about that. But seems like I am talking about the Solution Architech. I'm currently not interested in hardware as much as in the software, and how it is being deployed.

[Eeglis]

Just now, jde3 said:

Also Solution Architect

Titles.. fancy word for systems engineer. (haha)

I'm just a Project-Engineer

[Eeglis]

6 minutes ago, jde3 said:

My understanding is Windows is more difficult to automate. It's also not used very much but it varies from shop to shop. For instance I manage a lot of Unix systems. There may be windows only shops out there but not even Microsoft is like that so idk. Passwords and such are usually provided by an authentication system like LDAP.

Yeah, sadly what I'm tasked with is running on Windows. I will also take a look at LDAP.

[jde3]

All of them are generally sysadmins it's just.. yeah they do different kinds of work and thus have different titles.

[jde3]

4 minutes ago, Eeglis said:

Yeah, sadly what I'm tasked with is running on Windows. I will also take a look at LDAP.

AD is MS's version of LDAP.

[Eeglis]

Just now, jde3 said:

AD is MS's version of LDAP.

Ah, you mean Active Directory?

 

It becomes a bit limited, when you try to manage passwords for multiple different applications on Windows, and none of them use Windows Active Directory.

[wseaton]

Hardware is increasingly being commoditized and hosting companies are moving away from bare metal anything to virtual appliances. Need a VPN for your site, or different firewall? Spin up a VM.

 

Most hosting companies won't even give out info on this. Most of the time the client doesn't need what they think they need, and it adds a layer of security. Entire infrastructures are now virtual. If you cant automate server deployments you are doing it wrong. 

 

On prem is a different matter. In any respect, 99% of the time there's a pre canned solution unless you are the only ones on the planet using a specific piece of software that requires unique hardware.

[jde3]

On 4/4/2022 at 8:34 PM, wseaton said:

Hardware is increasingly being commoditized and hosting companies are moving away from bare metal anything to virtual appliances. Need a VPN for your site, or different firewall? Spin up a VM.

A very bad thing globally. you can think of a dram shortage and all those billions of VM's out there with provisioned dram doing nothing... all those kernel instances sucking up needless resources.. the energy required to compute fake hardware.. It's frighting and it's due to laziness and incompetence in the IT world.

 

The world needs to change and OS level virtualization (containers) is the answer. Emulating hardware is plain stupid. It was a bad idea in the 90's when alternatives existed and it's a bad idea today taken to the extreme. A Raspberry Pi could run 1000 containers.. how many VM's can it run?