Are Refurbished Servers Any Good?
When properly sourced, absolutely!!
I think it's so funny that this is a question we've been asked in chat multiple times. For one, I'm not sure if the question is grammatically correct - but for some reason it's always asked that way?.. but also...
To us refurbished servers aren't just good, but great options for our clients - in performance, savings, sustainability, and availability for them.
In many cases, refurbished servers can outperform the reliability of new servers. A typical new server acquired from a manufacturer has a failure rate of approximately 1% right out of the box. Used servers from reliable providers like Alta Tech can be delivered with failure rates well below a half of 1%.
Why would that be?
Well, equipment that has been used in the past has already had experienced an initial burn-in period. It's been "field tested" in production (albeit in climate-controlled, power-regulated environments like co-location data centers and corporate server rooms).
During the first 90 days of use out of the box, is easily the most common time you will see equipment fail. In fact, it's the first minutes or hours when users most commonly find out there's an issue with the factory build.
Our carefully decommissioned systems have already passed those key dates, and they continued to run and get pampered (maintained in a data center, or in an enterprise environment) - this equipment has been proven to be enterprise-grade and reliable.
After this phase in by the original user, the refurbisher will buy the equipment from that user, gently and carefully package it for delivery to our technical center, test it upon receipt, and fully break it down to its base CTO chassis for quick deployment in the future.
At time of sale, the equipment then will be reassembled to meet the new user's specifications and tested once more. Ultimately, not only has the equipment been field-tested, it's been tested twice in our technical center, proven to be ready for deployment without fail, with full diagnostics run. That's triple-tested!
Our users tell me that the equipment they receive from Alta just works, and in fact, over 50% of our end-user buyers put the refurbished equipment from us directly into production.
Some users prefer to use refurbished equipment simply for test or development environments, or emergency spares or backups, or sometimes disaster recovery as a backup vault. Over and over and over again, we the majority of users deploying refurbished servers and upgrades into production environments.
I'm so proud of the systems we sell - are they good? Absolutely.
Summary:Â Refurbished servers, when sourced properly, often surpass the reliability of new ones. Many users opt for refurbished equipment from Alta Technologies, finding it reliable for various purposes, including production, testing, development, emergency spares, backups, and disaster recovery.
Questions about Refurbished Servers?
Contact us anytime… we’ve been doing business in the secondary market for IT hardware since 1995.
info@altatechnologies.com
763-475-2900 | 800-546-2582
Last Updated:
04/05/2024
Additional Reading & Resources:
- Article:Â What are Used Servers?
- Article:Â Using & Maintaining Used Servers
- Article:Â Types of Servers
- Article:Â New vs. Used Servers
- Article:Â A More Sustainable IT Future
- Article:Â Separating ITAD Fact from Fiction
- Article:Â Maximizing Your IT Budget
- Alta:Â Used Servers for Sale
Corey is a reuse advocate with 20 years experience in ITAD and serves as President of Alta Technologies, the gold standard for quality in testing and refurbishing servers, networking and data storage hardware, since 1995.
An active member of the Right-To-Repair movement, Corey also serves on the ASCDI Board, is a member of the Forbes Business Council, Vistage, SIA and UNEDA. He enjoys local adventures with his family and dog, Freya, near Minneapolis, MN.