Chris,
thanks for another perspective and some good links. One of the things that initially attracted my attention to the Compaq servers was that there seemed to be a good supply of used equipment. I've seen the prices for the new Compaq systems, and that is simply out of the question. I often purchase used components, as I usually try to avoid the absolute latest technology, and I believe that it has been a cost-effective strategy.
At the same time, I would like to support hardware vendors that more specifically cater to the OSS development and user communities. One thing that would help me, and hopefully others, is to see some specific configurations that other people are running. I think it might make a nice addition to the discussion forum (or the site) to have a form where people could enter in their hardware configurations -- maybe have it broken down into the various subsystems and components -- and their comments, what they have seen as strengths and weaknesses, purchasing recommendations, etc. I would be happy to do the programming, if that is needed.
Some of the features that most often seem (to me) to be proprietary are system recovery and (disk/controller) subsystem redundancy. Again, speaking for myself while assuming that there are a lot of other people in the same boat, I am pretty comfortable evaluating and putting together the mainboard + CPU combination and components for a workstation, but I have little or no experience assembling and maintaining a system for high availability. Since costs can quickly balloon out of control if you just throw money at the problem, it would be particularly helpful to get information in that area.
Although I found Philip Greenspun's treatment of some of the Web hardware challenges and solutions very informative, his specific focus on high-end Sun and HP systems prevented it from being completely practical for people using other, more commonly available, equipment. Having a lot of experience building individual workstations and computers on the Intel/AMD/Cyrix/etc. platform(s), I feel that they could provide, hopefully, more cost-effective solutions and a more flexible upgrade path for those of us who are, literally, trying to bootstrap it.
