I'll add another vote for Dells- a) Their servers rack very nicely, particularly when you're using Dell racks. No tools are necessary, which saves a Lot of tim

I'll add another vote for Dells- a) Their servers rack very nicely, particularly when you're using Dell racks. No tools are necessary, which saves a Lot of time when you're setting up/moving the machines. b) The management tools are much better than you get from SuperMicro/offbranded machines- You can generally find a hardware fault quickly from their boot CDs, rather than diagnosing manually. c) As Kyle mentioned, the parts are ubiquitous- Dell still carries parts for most of their machines, but even if you can't find it from them, you can find it from another vendor. d) Because Dells are so common, it's easy to find other's experiences with a software/hardware combination. http://en.community.dell.com/forums/ http://en.community.dell.com/forums/ e) Support. Don't underestimate this when choosing what vendor to buy from.. With one of out offbrand vendors, a replacement drive took at least 2 weeks to be shipped out and arrive.. If you pay for the Dell premium support ($200ish per server), they'll drive a tech to the spot within hours. They're less than ideal on storage pricing- It's often cheaper to buy drives elsewhere.. Further, their live reporting tools (Check HD status, etc), aren't as good as they really should be. I'd certainly call up a sales rep and have a chat with them. They'll usually give you a discount if you're buying any quantity- If they hesitate, ask if they'll throw in free gold support. They'll normally do that to save a sale, since it doesn't cost the rep very much. -Colin