The best servers, according to hackers
6 servers were recommended on Hacker News between November 2025 and November 2026. We rank them by how many separate people recommend each one, and 3 earn the Hacker Approved badge.
Top picks
The three most recommended servers with the badge. Each figure is 5 people. RecommendsCriticizes One comment
Storage, network and compute together
Recommended for programmatically managed, owned on-prem racks with storage, network and compute in one package. Critics cite high cost and dated hardware.
Reliable, fault tolerant, highly available
Recommended for reliability, availability and fast I/O, and for running old workloads on modern hardware. Main caveat: high price and binding to IBM hardware.
Still strong for servers
Recommended for servers and critical workloads that must stay up, and for its well-regarded architecture; the common caveat is weaker multi-core performance than mainstream server CPUs.
All 6 servers, ranked
Select a column heading to sort. Approval share is recommenders out of everyone who gave an opinion; the tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs. Months counts the months, out of 13, in which someone recommended it.
| Rank | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oxide Computer rack | 92 | 20 | 82% | 10 | — | Approved |
| 2 | IBM Z mainframe | 23 | 8 | 74% | 11 | — | Approved |
| 3 | IBM POWER | 13 | 5 | 72% | 10 | — | Approved |
| 4 | Nvidia GH200 server | 12 | 2 | 86% | 2 | — | — |
| 5 | IBM AS/400 | 11 | 6 | 65% | 8 | — | — |
| 6 | LackRack | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
How we rank
Rank is the number of separate people who recommend a product in a Hacker News comment over the past year. Someone who praises the same server in five threads counts once.
The badge goes to servers that at least 10 people recommend, with recommenders outnumbering critics at least 2 to 1, recommended in at least 4 of the 13 months.
Rankings are never for sale. We may earn a commission when you buy through our links. It never changes the order.