Barebones, prebuilt, or something in between?
In my search for the best deal, I noticed that there were three general types of listings for most refurbished server models: barebones kits, starter kits, and fully loaded boxes. Unfortunately, almost all listings I saw lacked two components – rack-mount rail kits (for sliding chassis in and out of server racks or homemade racks made from parts of IKEA furniture), and the front security bezels, as featured in the lovely image above (courtesy of a Dell information PDF, found here). I can live without both, but the rails would have made organization much easier, and the front security bezel that locks in hot-swappable drive caddies would have looked snazzy. Oh well. Let’s take a look at each of the kinds of listings.