Reliable preowned vendors for homelab hardware

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Proparhino

Disciple
Hello all,

About 5 years ago, I used to buy a lot of used server-grade hardware from a shop that handled a lot of office liquidation type deals in Delhi. That shop has since shut down, unfortunately, (I think they had trouble in the pandemic and didn't reopen), so I'm looking for new places to find the stuff. Anyone here a sysadmin or equivalent in a company, and know which vendors are handling preowned equipment? Maybe some of you are customers of such vendors? I'm surprised there aren't easily searchable options online like serverpartdeals etc. Seems like it would be a large enough market to warrant one or two dedicated sites.

Also looking to make friends with anyone else here who dabbles in homelabbing. Please let me know if this is not the appropriate forum for it; glad to be pointed in the right direction.

Thanks in advance for all help!
 
I do homelab stuff, but I am done with server hardware, most of the things that are available for cheap are over 10+ years old and consume too much power and therefore not worth it, I found it the hard way when I purchased a 24 port Dell ProCurve 6224, only to find out it was consuming over 100W of power, switched it out to a brand new TPLINK switch and that only consumes at max 15Watts.
I do have contacts and vendors that sell server grade hardware here but they won't be cheap as others have noted, it might be cheaper in Delhi, but here in Mumbai they aren't.
 
You can simply create threads for homelab queries etc. I have a nuc and a rpi4 which I use to play around, aka dabble, nothing sophisticated :)

Stuff like pihole, librenms etc, just discovered wazuh.com from a recent YT video by networkchuck, seems very nice!
 
aasimenator said:
I do homelab stuff, but I am done with server hardware, most of the things that are available for cheap are over 10+ years old and consume too much power and therefore not worth it, I found it the hard way when I purchased a 24 port Dell ProCurve 6224, only to find out it was consuming over 100W of power, switched it out to a brand new TPLINK switch and that only consumes at max 15Watts.
I do have contacts and vendors that sell server grade hardware here but they won't be cheap as others have noted, it might be cheaper in Delhi, but here in Mumbai they aren't.
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Appreciate this context. What kind of rates do you guys in Bombay pay for electricity these days?

Which TP-Link switch did you get? Also, if you have the time could you outline your usecase? Always interested to hear from people.

Thanks for the info! I might ask you for contacts if I determine that I do in fact need some server stuff.
 
vishalrao said:
You can simply create threads for homelab queries etc. I have a nuc and a rpi4 which I use to play around, aka dabble, nothing sophisticated :)

Stuff like pihole, librenms etc, just discovered wazuh.com from a recent YT video by networkchuck, seems very nice!
Click to expand...
I look forward to creating those threads. I think I don't have access to any of the buying/selling stuff right now, and I have no idea how to get it. But that's not why I've joined here, so it doesn't matter a lot.

Had not checked out wazuh yet, thanks for the recommendation! I'm probably going to stick with what I am familiar with in the short term, but definitely seems like the kind of thing I should learn about to see if it can give me better functionality or a more streamlined stack.
 
aasimenator said:
I do homelab stuff, but I am done with server hardware, most of the things that are available for cheap are over 10+ years old and consume too much power and therefore not worth it, I found it the hard way when I purchased a 24 port Dell ProCurve 6224, only to find out it was consuming over 100W of power, switched it out to a brand new TPLINK switch and that only consumes at max 15Watts.
I do have contacts and vendors that sell server grade hardware here but they won't be cheap as others have noted, it might be cheaper in Delhi, but here in Mumbai they aren't.
Click to expand...
True but what about server drives aka SAS & enterprise grade HDDs 3-4 years old & retired because of corporate policy despite being perfectly fine.
 
guest_999 said:
True but what about server drives aka SAS & enterprise grade HDDs 3-4 years old & retired because of corporate policy despite being perfectly fine.
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Yeah this is the exact category of items I used to find at the shop that's now closed. Corporates dumping tech en masse due to shifting premises or some upgrade or very aggressive EOL timelines. Would be great to know of some place that handles this sort of thing. Obviously it allows one to save money, but also it's much less wasteful!
 
if you are not aiming to gain experience working with enterprise grade hardware for your career i would suggest going with consumer grade hardware. Lot of hardware you find in India are outdated, inefficient and loud.
I have yet to see a good vendor for server parts in India, typically companies here use the servers till they die or become unsupported so only outdated hardware are available in aftermarket unlike US.
 
vivek.krishnan said:
For homelab, nothing beats reddit -> https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/

For enterprise parts, its a mixed jungle out there. I would suggest to post it here or put a WTB thread.

Finally, equipment has come a long way now that you do not exactly need enterprise grade stuff, even commercial off the shelf stuff works fine for most use cases, barring niche ones.
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Appreciate the insight. Yeah unfortunately buying from the US isn't really an option for me, but that subreddit is fantastic regardless. I do think building a community in and of Indians would be more valuable to me, though. which is a big part of why I signed up here. Seemed like the best way to feel my way around this world.

30fps101 said:
if you are not aiming to gain experience working with enterprise grade hardware for your career i would suggest going with consumer grade hardware. Lot of hardware you find in India are outdated, inefficient and loud.
I have yet to see a good vendor for server parts in India, typically companies here use the servers till they die or become unsupported so only outdated hardware are available in aftermarket unlike US.
Click to expand...

I do have some professional applications for the homelab experiments I run, but I do think you're right that the tendency in India to use hardware longer means that a consumer-facing secondhand market for enterprise gear is unlikely to be worth my while. I suppose that shop I knew was unusual, and I had erroneously assumed there would be more like it (maybe that's why it's out of business!). What sort of secondhand market exists for consumer grade gear that would be appropriate for homelabs? Is this site and OLX etc the only real web presence for such a market? Thanks for your insight!
 
Proparhino said:
I do have some professional applications for the homelab experiments I run, but I do think you're right that the tendency in India to use hardware longer means that a consumer-facing secondhand market for enterprise gear is unlikely to be worth my while. I suppose that shop I knew was unusual, and I had erroneously assumed there would be more like it (maybe that's why it's out of business!). What sort of secondhand market exists for consumer grade gear that would be appropriate for homelabs? Is this site and OLX etc the only real web presence for such a market? Thanks for your insight!
Click to expand...
for consumer grade i have had good experience with sellers on this site and https://gameloot.in/
 
aasimenator said:
@Proparhino If you need something specific give me a shoutout I will try to source it for you.
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Will do. Thanks! Should I DM you or is there a part of this forum that is appropriate for such things?

In the short term, I think all I'm looking for two cases with at least 5x 3.5 inch cages/caddies/mounts each that are ITX motherboard compatible. Server rack is probably going to be too expensive, so I'm trying to figure out a retail alternative. I need one in Delhi and one in Bangalore, but I'm happy to take care of transport from either place or any third location.

Medium term (by the beginning of next financial year), I need to upgrade the CPU and RAM for those machines once I've done a proof of concept and trial run of the new stacks with my old hardware, so any AMD chip with an iGPU that has hardware AV1 encode (RDNA2 onwards I think? Not sure), plus compatible motherboard and RAM.


30fps101 said:
for consumer grade i have had good experience with sellers on this site and https://gameloot.in/
Click to expand...

Hadn't even heard of that site so this is useful to know. Thanks a lot!
 
Proparhino said:
Appreciate the insight. Yeah unfortunately buying from the US isn't really an option for me, but that subreddit is fantastic regardless. I do think building a community in and of Indians would be more valuable to me, though. which is a big part of why I signed up here. Seemed like the best way to feel my way around this world.



I do have some professional applications for the homelab experiments I run, but I do think you're right that the tendency in India to use hardware longer means that a consumer-facing secondhand market for enterprise gear is unlikely to be worth my while. I suppose that shop I knew was unusual, and I had erroneously assumed there would be more like it (maybe that's why it's out of business!). What sort of secondhand market exists for consumer grade gear that would be appropriate for homelabs? Is this site and OLX etc the only real web presence for such a market? Thanks for your insight!
Click to expand...

As I said, post here. I do have a couple of contacts for enterprise grade. Ditto as aasim said. Have gotten in touch with him for 10Gbe as well.
 
www.xfurbish.com

Xfurbish.com

We are the Largest Online Selling of refurbished Servers, Workstations, Storage & Networking products. We have the biggest collections of parts & Accessories like Raid Controllers, Hard Disk Drives, Tape Drives, Power Supply and more.
www.xfurbish.com www.xfurbish.com
I have purchased for quite a few servers/cards from them. I say good enough prices.
I wouldn't recommend buying anything released before 2011/12 cause the idle power consumption is too high. I mainly buy these for the chassis and accessories and replace the internals with 2 or 3 gen old consumer parts.
Now-a-days using those DELL/HP/Lenovo micro pcs mostly.
Few days back got a DELL optiplex 3050 from local market with 6th gen i5 16GB RAM 1 TB SSD + PSU for ~₹12000
 
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avinandan012 said:
www.xfurbish.com

Xfurbish.com

We are the Largest Online Selling of refurbished Servers, Workstations, Storage & Networking products. We have the biggest collections of parts & Accessories like Raid Controllers, Hard Disk Drives, Tape Drives, Power Supply and more.
www.xfurbish.com www.xfurbish.com
I have purchased for quite a few servers/cards from them. I say good enough prices.
Click to expand...
I would stay away from xrubbish -

How reliable is this site = https://www.xfurbish.com/

Has anyone made any purchase through this site selling refurbished products? I'm looking to buy a laptop bezel but not sure about the credibility of this site. https://www.xfurbish.com/
techenclave.com techenclave.com
 
no offence, ribbon type cables should not be bought used online. Go to your local repair place try to get them through them or from ebay/aliexpress.

No issues getting robust server hardware from them. I got 2 servers(DELL poweredge, few quad port 1 Gbe Nics an APC management card all were clean and working. Only thing indicating these are used is minor scratch marks near the rails and no box/accessories. No dust nothing. So I say okay.
 
avinandan012 said:
no offence, ribbon type cables should not be bought used online. Go to your local repair place try to get them through them or from ebay/aliexpress.

No issues getting robust server hardware from them. I got 2 servers(DELL poweredge, few quad port 1 Gbe Nics an APC management card all were clean and working. Only thing indicating these are used is minor scratch marks near the rails and no box/accessories. No dust nothing. So I say okay.
Click to expand...
We should always judge an e-commerce store based on how they handle their mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, if the customer support is non-existent or just plain bad, I would not risk my money.
 
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