Server for starting company

[Xan]

Me and a couple of buddies want to create a tower server for the bunch of us.

 

I'm thinking of the next functions:

• Storage server
• DNS server (I've got a static IP)
• Webserver (I've bought a couple of domains already)

 

The hardware i'm planning to use:

• Ryzen 7 2700 (2 cores for each function and a spare pair to mess around with)
• Generic 32GB RAM
• 550W Seasonic focus plus (80 plus platinum)
• 3 * 8TB Iron Wolf in RAID 5 (Storage server)
• 3 * 120 GB mSATA SSD's ( already have 3 random cards laying around)
• Mobo not chosen yet

 

My questions:

• Should I choose an expensive mobo with most of the needed functions built in or a basic mobo and buy expansion cards (RAID card for HDD's, M.2 SSDs converter)?
• Should I make 1 huge server with all functionalities baked in or use virtual servers?
• Any ideas on how I could allocate the SSDs?
• Is there any way to add new disks to a RAID to expand it without specialized hardware? 

 

Extra info:

• I know I could just buy an older xeon like an E5-2670 v2, but finding the right motherboard is a pain in the derrière
• Rack mounting is not an option yet. We don't have the space for it
• At the moment nothing's really mission critical so I don't think we need ECC RAM
• My budget is €1650 max
• I've got some basic experience with Windows Server 2012

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

How many users? Are you running AD?

 

Id probably go aws or simmilar for web servers.

 

Id go with something from dell/hp/lenovo over a whitebox. Don't use random hardware like this if you care about uptime.

 

Id probably get a refurb dell r730 or r720 here. There much better at the server role than the whitebox ryzen build.

 

Id run a ypervisor here.

 

 

[F___M]

uhmmmmm…...

 

you are heading for trouble.  Inexperience will leave you open to security issues.  The business you plan on will benefit from a PAID network administrator position to guide the purchasing decisions and configuration of the network and server.  You haven't even considered the connectivity hardware for the network.   A web server should not be hosted within your network.

 

also> ALL DATA IS VALUABLE. SMH.

[Radium_Angel]

20 minutes ago, Xan said:

create a tower server

Buy a Dell T-series server. Robust, redundant, reliable. Much better option.

[Xan]

7 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How many users? Are you running AD?

 

Id probably go aws or simmilar for web servers.

 

Id go with something from dell/hp/lenovo over a whitebox. Don't use random hardware like this if you care about uptime.

 

Id probably get a refurb dell r730 or r720 here. There much better at the server role than the whitebox ryzen build.

 

Id run a ypervisor here.

 

 

Just 3 concurrent users for the first years. 

Uptime isn't really that important since we won't be using the server constantly. (But still i've thought of  that with the PSU).

And about that refurb dell. I quote my text: 

• I know I could just buy an older xeon like an E5-2670 v2, but finding the right motherboard is a pain in the derrière
• Rack mounting is not an option yet. We don't have the space for it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Xan said:

Just 3 concurrent users for the first years. 

Uptime isn't really that important since we won't be using the server constantly. (But still i've thought of  that with the PSU).

And about that refurb dell. I quote my text: 

• I know I could just buy an older xeon like an E5-2670 v2, but finding the right motherboard is a pain in the derrière
• Rack mounting is not an option yet. We don't have the space for it.

just get something like a t620. You get a used server that takes those cpus and uses the normal space.

 

ALso id just go aws here. No upfront cost, cheap and easy to expand aswell.

[Xan]

7 hours ago, F___M said:

uhmmmmm…...

 

you are heading for trouble.  Inexperience will leave you open to security issues.  The business you plan on will benefit from a PAID network administrator position to guide the purchasing decisions and configuration of the network and server.  You haven't even considered the connectivity hardware for the network.   A web server should not be hosted within your network.

 

also> ALL DATA IS VALUABLE. SMH.

You think we can hire a netwerk specialist if our server budget is only €1650? 

I may have studied Microsoft server for only a year, but I am still a bachelor at Electronics & ICT with a Sisco certification. Think I'm somewhat qualified for this job.

Connectivity hardware? 2 1Gbps ports should suffice for 3 guys to store and download data. And i've also got a  decent switch  and extra network cards laying around.

[MartinIAm]

Hey, I just have an extra idea for you! Make a mail server, and configure it instead of paying someone like google to host a mail server for you.

[jake9000]

Your public website needs to be on a DMZ. Separate hardware, firewalled away from your corp network. You do not want a wordpress vuln turning into ransomware of your business data or something equally stupid. 

That said you can run a basic website on shared hosting for pocket change, and I recommend you think about how long it will take a $7/mo host to overtake the cost of physical hardware. 

 

The other stuff can run on a single megaserver. Not ideal but it is fine for a startup. 

Go sign up for Microsoft Dev Essentials and activate the pluralsight trial. the mcsa 2016 path is good enough for server 2019 too and will get all your critical services off the ground. 

[AbsoluteFool]

12 hours ago, Xan said:

Me and a couple of buddies want to create a tower server for the bunch of us.

 

I'm thinking of the next functions:

• Storage server
• DNS server (I've got a static IP)
• Webserver (I've bought a couple of domains already)

 

The hardware i'm planning to use:

• Ryzen 7 2700 (2 cores for each function and a spare pair to mess around with)
• Generic 32GB RAM
• 550W Seasonic focus plus (80 plus platinum)
• 3 * 8TB Iron Wolf in RAID 5 (Storage server)
• 3 * 120 GB mSATA SSD's ( already have 3 random cards laying around)
• Mobo not chosen yet

 

My questions:

• Should I choose an expensive mobo with most of the needed functions built in or a basic mobo and buy expansion cards (RAID card for HDD's, M.2 SSDs converter)?
• Should I make 1 huge server with all functionalities baked in or use virtual servers?
• Any ideas on how I could allocate the SSDs?
• Is there any way to add new disks to a RAID to expand it without specialized hardware? 

 

Extra info:

• I know I could just buy an older xeon like an E5-2670 v2, but finding the right motherboard is a pain in the derrière
• Rack mounting is not an option yet. We don't have the space for it
• At the moment nothing's really mission critical so I don't think we need ECC RAM
• My budget is €1650 max
• I've got some basic experience with Windows Server 2012

 

Guess i'll give my opinoin on this as i host my own servers from home. While it is possible, it takes alot of configuration of not only the home network but also the server side of the network. Anything that goes public is basicly an attack highway directly to you.

 

There is nothing wrong with the hardware you've choosen. You might run into trouble with a storage server on the same machine as the public facing web server. Idealy you want to split these into seperate boxes on seperate networks.

 

You also want to find information on how to fine tune the web server you are using, and atleast harden the security as best as you can. Most domain registrars also want at least two DNS servers to let you host the DNS servers yourself. A simple way out here can be to let you're registrar host the domain for you and point the A records to you're web server, this is typically prefered by home users.

 

You should also have a good backup in place here, as a home user i wouldnt settle for an internal backup and call it a day. While internal is good, and external backup might even save youre ass when the ransomware comes, and it most likely will at some point.

 

And last, not to disagree with anyone when it comes to redundant PSU etc for servers, but there are ways to have two identical cheap servers and have them act as a HA setup. But here again requires good knowledge about the choosen OS and the command line tool.

[Xan]

Alright. Taking your advice in consideration. I will put my web-server on a separate device and network. (Probably a Raspberry pi with Apache for now since our website will just have some information and contact info).

 

But any tips for the motherboard dilemma?

 

 

[F___M]

16 hours ago, Xan said:

Electronics & ICT with a Sisco certification

It's Cisco......

[colinrubbert]

First:
A little context might help a bit. We don't know what your business is so it's difficult to suggest anything concrete. Adding some info here may help with clarity. 

 

Second:
If you are building a website or a SaaS it would be highly recommended to not host yourself, it's not worth the extra time and effort you will have to invest in security and maintenance when paid hosting is relatively cheap. For websites that are just informational go with something like static site generator, they're easy to maintain and there's nothing there to attack, it's just text no database. Also with SSGs you can find free or dirt cheap hosting with quality CDNs and great performance; CloudCannon, Forestry, and Netlify are a few great options. If you need a CMS then you can go with something like Statamic, CraftCMS or a SSG with a CMS service (CloudCannon, Forestry, and Netlify all provide CMS options). Avoid Wordpress for the simple fact it's got a MASSIVE target on its back and it has a terrible UI but that's my personal belief.

If you're building a SaaS product then go with established providers like Heroku, AWS, Azure, GCP, and Digital Ocean. They all provide reliable, cost effective app services and it eliminates much, if not all, of the maintenance and infrastructure security.

Third:

Your hardware, if the intent is for all of you to be working in the same space and the server ends up acting like a file share you'll be just fine with the Ryzen build, just make sure you're backing up the data both locally and offsite for redundancies. This would also be just fine if you are all working remotely and accessing the server from remote locations, networking will be your limitation factor here. For the motherboard question, I would go with at least an Asus x470 motherboard for their reliability, quality of parts, and features (also personal preference). 

 

That all being said if you plan on running multiple services or the server will be getting massive workloads or you will be working off of virtual machines on the server go with something more dedicated to support that stuff. Finding refurbed servers like a Dell T430 or something comparable will save some money and give you a solid working capacity, reliability, and cheap or cost effective, easy to find, replacement parts. If you can't find a decently priced refurbed server online call around to local e-recyclers they will be happy to sell stuff to you if you're a decent person and they have decent stuff. They will make more money if they sell you a server than if they part it out for recycling. E-recycler stuff tends to not be tested so you will have to do some extra work on that front but it will save some cash on the backend. 

Fourth:

Go with virtualization if it suits your needs, it gives you the ability to split your services and silo off roles in case something wonky happens you can just rebuild one piece of the many services versus a single install where if one thing breaks you may have to, in my experience, rebuild ALL of it, especially if it breaks hard. 

For virtualization software, my personal preference right now is Proxmox. I've been thoroughly impressed with it, just rebuilt two virtualization servers with Proxmox with a third one being rebuilt once I get my new network done. I really quite enjoy it. I've used Citrix XenServer and VMWare EXSi prior and Proxmox just has a better feature set and usability over the other two's "free" solutions, unless you want  to pay a butt load to VMWare or Citrix for their enterprise stuff. 

Finally, just a side thought. I saw you wanted to pick Ryzen 2700x and while it's a VERY impressive cpu (which is currently powering my gaming rig) take a look at the new Ryzen 5 3600. It doesn't have the same core count (6c/12t) but the cpu benchmark is higher than even the 2700x. It's the R5 3600 will be powering my multi-serviced virtualization server very soon, I think. 

Anyways happy building! Sorry I don't have a great recommendation for RAID cards or anything of the like but maybe take a look at what Backblaze uses for their storage pods and maybe you can pick and choose something that will work for you, just make sure you research whether or not the card is supported under the VM hypervisor or OS you choose. 

Good luck with your business. 

[Xan]

18 hours ago, colinrubbert said:

First:
A little context might help a bit. We don't know what your business is so it's difficult to suggest anything concrete. Adding some info here may help with clarity. 

We're game developers and want to start our own studio. We've got most front end items, but lack any decent centralization of our projects and data. (Google Drive, but it's full and we're using way too much bandwidth and time downloading/uploading everything.

[colinrubbert]

6 hours ago, Xan said:

We're game developers and want to start our own studio. We've got most front end items, but lack any decent centralization of our projects and data. (Google Drive, but it's full and we're using way too much bandwidth and time downloading/uploading everything.

If that's the case, it sounds like you really just need a file server for assets and repository source control. If that's all you need then I think a Ryzen build would be more than enough to handle what you are doing. If you're using it to render objects then you might want to look into something a bit more powerful and more so in the GPU side of things, adding something like a Quadro P2000 could do the trick (cost effective and powerful). 

 

I still wouldn't host a web server unless absolutely necessary, if you're looking to access your data remotely go with a VPN to your network that the server will be on. 

 

You could really go with something like GitLab hosted locally and use that as both your source control AND your file server as you could realistically use it to version control your assets as well. Since you won't need to pay for cloud storage of source control than you can easily afford to use it as a file server for assets. Create a couple repos: one for source controlled code and one for version controlled assets? Could be a good option. 

 

Just spit balling here. You could do two VM's hosted on a proxmox hypervisor: one VM would be some sort of OpenVPN or the similar VPN image (I've recently fell in love with AlgoVPN self-hosted vpn but YMMV) and the second VM could be your GitLab VM that manages and controls your code and assets version control. Sync your source code with local environment and a private repo on Github or GitLab for redundancy. You could do the same with your assets but that may get expensive but you should definitely have at least a 3-2-1 backup solution. 

[Scheer]

On 9/24/2019 at 10:35 AM, Xan said:

I know I could just buy an older xeon like an E5-2670 v2, but finding the right motherboard is a pain in the derrière

I don't see how finding a motherboard is very hard. Go to eBay and search : "supermicro x9 2011", you'll get 573 results that will work with that CPU. If they are square-ish, click on them and look at the form factor to make sure its ATX or eATX and you are good to go. If its the shape of a puzzle piece, its pretty obliviously not going to work in a standard case, so don't click on it.

 

Or just get an old Dell tower server like the T320. Although, if you don't have much room a rack mount server is a better option IMO, just mount it to the wall with a vertical rack.

 

It seems pretty crazy to spend that much money for consumer hardware to use for a server when its much less for nearly as powerful used servers. The ONE downside is power consumption, older servers aren't cheap to run...

 

 

 

Everyone is going to have their own opinion, but I think you should:

 

Pay for web hosting, its not worth the hassle to self host for how cheap it is to have it hosted.

Get a QNAP/Synology NAS for mass file storage, cheap to buy and cheap to power.

Get a NEW lower end server, Dell T30's go for $300 every now and then, add RAM as needed. At a certain point, its cheaper to get the more expensive T330 as RAM is cheaper for it than the T30. Run a few VMs on here for your misc services.

 

You now have two devices that can have storage, so you can backup each of them to each other. In the case of hardware failure on one you'd at minimum at least have access to all your data.