Hello all, I looking to get into the enterprise component side of things . I will be getting a small 9 to 12u cabinet that will house all of my equipment. I would like to find a single socket 1u or 2u setup with 4-bays for storage and 16GB’s of RAM at a minimum.
I’m not looking to build a DIY at this point(RAM prices still high).Unless someone can point me in the right direction for combo deals. Also would like it to be moderate with the noise/power factors. I’m prowling ebay at presence,but just can’t make a well informed decision. Have always used consumer parts for my servers over the years.
As for my OS, I have not settled on one yet(Win16,FreeNas,LinuxZFS or RockStor with BTFS raid 10) are considerations.I currently have x4 6TB HGST drives,so I’m thinking that not all the servers I’ve looked at will be compatible. Mini/half-depth would be ideal but… My budget is $500 or below. Sorry to be long winded but any help would highly appreciated.
I wouldn’t consider the noise levels of 1U/2U rackmount servers to be moderate. They will be loud once the processor starts being utilized. Personally, I wouldn’t use a 1U in a home environment as it can be heard from anywhere. They will be as loud as a central vacuum system.
A lot of 1U servers won’t accommodate 3.5" drives, just due to their size.
If you are looking for a budget of $500, see if you can fit a cheap HBA into that budget. It will be better than relying on the Intel chipset.
That being said, I like the PowerEdge R510. You can find them for dirt cheap on eBay in both 2.5" and 3.5" configurations, and they come with the H200 or H700 controller which works with any Operating System.
Thanks for the insight Dmetsys. Just what I was suspecting but wasn’t sure about, I will have a look at the R510’s. Are these high power consumption units ?
@Dynamic_Gravity, interesting I will have a look at these too. 220W from the wall isn’t bad. I’ve just spotted some with 5620/5649/5650 to 5670 + L5630 cpu’s is there all that much performance difference between the bunch.
Figure if I going the dual-cpu route might as well put a vm pen-testing lab etc, on it too.
EDIT: If the 1u and 2u units are that loud what would you guys suggest I look at where the noise would be acceptable. The server would be place in my office/mancave in a enclosed rack.
L SKU’s are low-power, and are usually slower than the E/X series SKU’s.
E series are the SKU’s commonly found in rack-mounts.
X series are performance based, and are usually found in pedestal servers.
I wouldn’t be trying to run VM’s on L SKU’s, but that’s just my opinion.
If you are looking for lowest db in noise levels, you are only going to find that in a 4U or pedestal server.
Avoid trying to upgrade the Cpu to an X version. Some motherboards don’t have the power required to do it and it will randomly crash or fail to post of say a socket is bad.
OK, I guess I do some more research and try to find a suitable 2 to 4u server and let you guys know what I come up with.Thanks a bunch for the help thus far,learned somethings today.
Are these high power consumption units ?