Question : Problem: HP or IBM or DELL server hot-plug able HDD Choose?

Hi all,

I plan help my company to buy a Server from HP/IBM/DELL that using it for File Server and SQL Application for 40 person using at the same time.

Just I discovered if buy the server from the HP/IBM and then also buy the HDD from them, like SAS or SATA (Hot-Plug able for RAID5) is very expersive.

I am wonder do I can buy direct from the HDD brand distributer company like WD, Hitachi, Seagate etc?

Do the Hitachi's Deskstar E7K500 series and the WD RE2 or Seagate;s ES/ES.2 series suit for Enterprise Class hot-plug RAID 5 (Hot-Plug) using on cheaper price compare with buy from HP/IBM/DELL?

I think my company can not image of the 10000 rom SAS HDD, since the price is too high for a SME in Hong Kong. So for the 7200 rpm 3.5" or 2.5" which Enterpeise Class and which brand is best of best? Since I have not experience on the Enterprise Class line of HDD.

Thank you.

Answer : Problem: HP or IBM or DELL server hot-plug able HDD Choose?

In theory you could purchase hard drives from another company but I wouldn't recommend it.  It's going to cause more grief for you in the future than if you purchased the drives from the server manufacturer.    I'm not sure you can even buy a server without at least a couple of drives (i've never tried), but you run the risk that when a problem does happen the companies are going to blame the other increasing your downtime.  They also issue firmware updates to the drives occasionally so you lose out on that too.