In my experience, you'll be dealing with firmware glitches even with mainstream OEMs. You can avoid a lot of the RFP/RFQ and scale issues by going to a ODM/OEM

In my experience, you'll be dealing with firmware glitches even with mainstream OEMs. You can avoid a lot of the RFP/RFQ and scale issues by going to a ODM/OEM hybrid like Edge-core, or Quanta. Or Penguin Computing or Supermicro. If you already have a relationship with Dell or HP, you probably won't get quite as good pricing, but they're still options. I am shockingly biased (I co-founded Cumulus Networks) but working with a software vendor who can help you with the entire solution is very helpful. The scale gitlab has talked about in this thread is firmly in the range where self-sparing/ODM/disaggregation make sense. I think 500 racks is a huge overestimate, I think the cross-over point is closer to 5 racks.