Hey
I’m looking to build a new NAS for the home. It’ll run all my storage as well as a couple of virtual servers. I’ve been scouring Ebay for used server hardware I could use but I’m not sure what to pick. ECC memory is a requirements and it needs enough horse power for a few virtual servers. Perhaps some last gen Xeon stuff could be used? Could you please help me with what to pick?
If you don't mind buying used hardware, then might I suggest looking at the Dell PowerEdge R210 and R310 series. They both use the LGA 1156 Xeons which are still good cpu's. I have a Dell PE R210 running with a X3460 with 8gigs of ECC, and intel i350-T4 NIC as my home vm server. I would consider looking at those since most of the Xeon's that you can install have hyper threading with boost clocks, and the ram max's out between 16 to 32 gigs depending on what model you choose to buy. Plus you would have OOB management built right in. If a rack-mount isn't your cup of tea then building a NAS that is a tower would get the job done as well. You can find decent ATX & MATX server motherboards that could be used for that purpose also, maybe even some last gen gaming hardware would prob work as well, and might save you some money when it is time to build. It could all depend on what kind of hardware that you are wanting to run your storage off of. Are you looking for a decent RAID controller, or possibly looking for a motherboard that has plenty of SATA ports so you can run ZFS??
I have no problems buying used. I'm a student so I like saving money whenever possible :)
Thanks for the suggestions. They look interesting, but I'd rather build a tower server. Do you know about any particular boards I should be looking for?
I'll be running FreeNAS so plenty of SATA ports is a big plus.
Yeah I know of some brands that might work good for your build. Here is a Intel server board under $200 Intel S1200BTLR. Other Intel boards that are similar in specs would probably work fine. Others would be Asrock, Asus, Supermicro MATX boards they are cheaper lol. Well since your are interested in saving money maybe this Asus work staion motherboard ASUS P9D WS Intel. I know your not interested in rack units here is a Dell PE R210 that might peak your interest Dell PE R210. This might be what you are looking for Dell Power Edge 2600 Tower
I would not look at anything older than Dell's 9th Gen stuff. The 8th gen and previous do not use SAS or SATA and use the older SCSI standard. Plus they have a very limited memory capacity along with very power hungry processors.
Dell 2900's (although a tower server) are really a no go with FreeNAS due to the SAS RAID cards not being able to run in IT modes for use with FreeNAS. (Plus the JBOD mode adds a header that plays hell with FreeNAS)
When using pre-built servers, you really need to be careful at how the drives are connected to the system. When there is more than 4, it is usually via a RAID card.
@Zeverin
How many drives are you looking at starting with? And I presume you are US based.
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I would check out this website they have servers HP and dell that are refurbished with 2 year warranties decently priced.
That is true, I forgot to take that into consideration. I think that he is looking for a tower model though, the 2900 series would be a good start for him if he couldn't find what he was looking for.
Dell PowerEdge T110 at US $179.99, comes with an intel Xeon Quad Core X3430 2.4Ghz, 2GB and 1TB HD.
It has some scratches on the case tho.
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Yeah that would be a good pick as well! It can have up to 16 g of ram, four sata/sas ports (up to 4tb of total storage), good expansion slots, and 2xUSB ports on motherboard giving the option to boot from a flash drive. Also when ever you want more cpu horse power you can upgrade to faster x3400 series Xeon that supports HT since the x3430 Xeon doesn't which would help with FreeNAS/ZFS.
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Thanks a lot for all the suggestions! I live in Sweden so shipping from the US is probably quite expensive though..
Could you please tell me how the systems compare to, for example, the ASRock C2750 d4i Avoton board?
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=1287&cmp[]=2185&cmp[]=1291
Directly between the Xeon X3430 vs the Avaton chip. The atom chip lacks in single threaded performance, but makes up for it in number of cores and power consumption.
Plus the fact that the Atom chip comes on boards such as the AsRock one mentioned fully packed with all the things you require. Hell the TekSyndicate Guys and Linus Tech both made NAS's at some point using this board.
For a NAS the AsRock board is most probs the best thing for you.
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Thanks for the suggestions. I ended up buying the AsRock C2750, but you helped me make sure I wasn't missing some opportunity with the second hand hardware.
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Solid choice!
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