The Server

Or I bring the whole thing, already built

The usual sticking point is not the software. It is that a small business has no spare server to put it on, no idea what to buy, and no wish to find out.

So I build the machine as well. An off-lease HP ProLiant — with Linux and Wazuh already installed, configured and tested before it leaves my workshop. It arrives, it is plugged in, it starts watching.

What it costs

• The server on its own: $1,800. Built, tested, Wazuh installed, warranted 24 months. New York sales tax applies — it is equipment.
• Server and installation together: $3,900. The server plus the discounted installation at $2,100. Separately they would come to $4,300, so this saves you $400.

Off-lease is not the same as second-hand

Banks, brokerages and hospitals do not buy servers, they lease them on three-year cycles and hand them back on schedule — whether or not anything is wrong with them. The hardware is retired by the calendar, not by failure. That is where these machines come from: enterprise equipment that spent three years in a climate-controlled datacentre being looked after properly, now available at a fraction of what it cost new.

A machine of this class sold for around $20,000 new. I know, because installing and supporting HP ProLiant servers was my job for years — I am ProLiant certified and I have had hundreds of them apart. I know which parts fail, which never do, and what to check before one of these leaves my bench. You are getting $20,000 of engineering for $1,800, and somebody who has worked on it since it was new.

None of this is a sales line. Ask, and I will show you the original paperwork — what these machines listed for, and what they were bought and leased under. I kept the records.

What you get

• Warranted 24 months, parts and labour, anything that goes wrong with the machine. If it fails I repair it or replace it. That is a longer warranty than most new small-business servers carry.
• It looks like Windows. Linux Mint, not a black screen full of typing. A Start button, a taskbar, windows you close with an X. Your staff will not need retraining, and most will never touch it.
• Built and tested here first. Assembled, installed, configured and left running in my workshop before delivery. You do not get a box of parts and a login. You get a working system.
• Enterprise hardware. Redundant power supplies, error-correcting memory, hardware RAID. Built to run continuously for years without being touched — which is exactly what a monitoring server has to do.
• Yours outright. You own the hardware and the software. No lease, no subscription to the box, and nothing that stops working if you stop paying me.

Specification is matched to the size of your network — a fifteen-machine office needs considerably less than a hundred-machine one, and I would rather sell you the right size than the biggest.