Quiet lowcost virtualization server?

[Lunorian]

Hi. I am looking to get a small server at home for virtualization. Specifically it will run the hypervisor known as Proxmox. As far as specs go I would like to see around 12 or more cores and 64GB or more of RAM. SSD/HDD Storage is negotiable. Since this server will be at home it needs to be quiet. I've seen (horrifying) videos of how loud these servers can get, I live with siblings at home and also am sensitive to noise myself. I'm looking to spend around $500~ on used hardware on a site like eBay or similar. To be clear it does not have to be server hardware but does need to support strong virtualization. Another request I'll add is it's energy efficient. Last thing I want to do is spike our electric bill at $0.13/kWh. I appreciate any advise on if such a server exists (even if we're using consumer motherboards).

[Electronics Wizardy]

What vms are you running?

 

Fitting low power, high ram + cpu and low noise is hard.

 

You can get a prebuild server, and fan mod them, and they get pretty quiet, so something like a r710, will easily fit performance needs.

 

You can also go r5 1600, super low power, quiet, should fit in budget, but getting that ram won't be cheap.

 

Could find some dual 2011 and dual 1366 boards on ebay and build them in a case, but be aware of non stanand boards. 

 

Id personally go ryen here if it was me.

[Windows7ge]

If you want it quiet your best option will probably be to build it from the ground up but to fit it into $500 you'll probably have to buy everything used if you want 64GB of RAM.

 

I'd look into the E5-2670v1. Make sure it has a Stepping of C2 or later though. Second hand DDR3 server memory can be had very cheaply particularly in 16GB modules.

[Lunorian]

Thanks for the suggestions so far, I'm having trouble knowing exactly what to buy. Could someone link me to a case, boards, power supply, and whatever else I need? (An all-in-one package would be great). Beyond that it's just a matter of it being quiet. I read that there are aftermarket fans that are nearly silent. I want this server to be at home so I have instant access (compared to co-location where I'd need to pay a monthly fee for power and internet plus rent for the actual space).

[Mwoody]

The fastest and easiest thing to do would be to pickup a used workstation class machine off of Ebay.  Something like a HP XW9400 or XW8600, or to get a bit newer, maybe a Z600 or Z800 series.  The XW9400's are pretty cheap, can take two 12core Socket F (cheap) Opterons, and a max of 64GB of now cheap DDR2 ECC RAM.  It can support a bunch of drives both SATA (only SATA 2) and SAS (3MB/s).  It can also be found natively water cooled, so it would be pretty quiet.  The Z800 can also be water cooled, but the water cooled units are much harder to find, but might be easier to work with as they are a lot newer, and would support newer and Intel processors.

 

This stuff is really easy to find on Ebay, mostly all setup.  You might need to change CPU's and change out the RAM.  I would think you could do an XW9400 for less than $500 pretty easy if you look around enough.  I have two of them and think they are a great way of starting into high performance computing, without breaking the bank. The one thing that might be an issue with the XW9400 ir the built in Ethernet is an old Nvidia chipset, and your hypervisor might not support it, so you might need to pick up an Intel card, and I would recommend a dual port card.

[GDRRiley]

On 2/11/2020 at 11:41 AM, Mwoody said:

The fastest and easiest thing to do would be to pickup a used workstation class machine off of Ebay.  Something like a HP XW9400 or XW8600, or to get a bit newer, maybe a Z600 or Z800 series.  The XW9400's are pretty cheap, can take two 12core Socket F (cheap) Opterons, and a max of 64GB of now cheap DDR2 ECC RAM.  It can support a bunch of drives both SATA (only SATA 2) and SAS (3MB/s).  It can also be found natively water cooled, so it would be pretty quiet.  The Z800 can also be water cooled, but the water cooled units are much harder to find, but might be easier to work with as they are a lot newer, and would support newer and Intel processors.

 

This stuff is really easy to find on Ebay, mostly all setup.  You might need to change CPU's and change out the RAM.  I would think you could do an XW9400 for less than $500 pretty easy if you look around enough.  I have two of them and think they are a great way of starting into high performance computing, without breaking the bank. The one thing that might be an issue with the XW9400 ir the built in Ethernet is an old Nvidia chipset, and your hypervisor might not support it, so you might need to pick up an Intel card, and I would recommend a dual port card.

that gear is so old, they have horrible performance vs power consumption.

dell r710

hp dl380 g8 or g9

 

workstation from them would also do well. LGA 2011 is going to be where you get the best price/performance for high core count.

[THEGURUOFNOTHING]

(bangs head on the desk over and over). For that budget, you will be writing a list and selecting 2 things. You just can't get power efficient, quiet, powerful, allows LOTS of memory and dirt ass cheap in the same package. Unless you are friends with a computer builder that is gonna chip in on your project. Pretty much anything in the commercial realm is going to be noisy as hell. Or VERY expensive, even used. Workstation grade boxes are good, but they still are expensive to get computing power and ram space. Power consumption is relative to age and power. Faster systems are going to use more power. $800 to $1000... more options. For a couple thousand and used parts you can build something that kinda makes all those work. For 3000 you could check all those boxes and have a serious box.

[Dutch_Master]

If silence is a hard requirement, wait 'till the AMD Ryzen 4000 series have permeated to the desktop/mini-ITX market. The 4000 is a laptop chip, so very quiet and highly energy efficient. Put an triple 120mm fan AIO on it on low setting and you won't (well, hardly) be able to hear it. No need for a GPU and storage connects via PCIe slots and/or SATA/SAS ports. But, and there always is a but, it won't be available for at least 2-3 years and even then only if AMD doesn't "do an Intel" and have their production capacity grossly underestimated. On the flip side, should the 4000 series fail in the laptop market (which I doubt, but what do i know), they'll probably come rather sooner so AMD could recoup the undoubtedly considerable R&D/production costs.

 

But you won't be spending just 500 bucks in any case

[silentdragon95]

I think your best bet would be LGA2011 harware, although $500 might still be a little tight with your requirements.

 

There is a 12-core LGA2011-2 CPU (the Xeon E5-2697 v2) that can be had for around $200 used these days, this would eliminate the need for a complicated and power hungry dual-processor setup (although the CPU does also support dual-processor operation). As far as motherboards go you could try your luck with a cheap chinese "X79" board that claims to support quad channel memory, such as this one, but your mileage may vary. Used LGA2011 brand-name motherboards aren't as expensive as they used to be but will still set you back $150-200, however those would be guaranteed to actually work properly. Most of these boards will be standard ATX, so you can chose pretty much any case you like (or that's available cheaply). The benefit of this platform, as others have already stated, is that it allows you to use DDR3 ECC memory, which is pretty cheap on the used market. On AliExpress, 4 16GB modules will set you back ~$130, but I'd suggest also checking Ebay.

 

As far as the "silent" part goes, just get something like a Noctua NH-D15 as your CPU cooler and that should be fine. Any half-decent 500W power supply should do the job comfortably, at least as long as you don't add high end GPUs to the system. In fact, power consumption shouldn't be much worse than a modern 12-core Ryzen system, just the performance per core is obviously going to be lower (but then again, a R9 3900X alone is like $500).

[Mwoody]

On 2/14/2020 at 11:44 AM, GDRRiley said:

that gear is so old, they have horrible performance vs power consumption.

dell r710

hp dl380 g8 or g9

 

workstation from them would also do well. LGA 2011 is going to be where you get the best price/performance for high core count.

Yes, they are old, But not that power hungry.  The DDR2 ECC RAM is REALLY cheap, and so are the CPU's.  You have to look at workstation or server class machines to get over 32GB of RAM in a desktop machine.  You can go newer workstation class too, that would use DDR3 ECC memory, and newer CPU, just remember as you go newer cost goes up.  Most server class machines are not super power efficient and they are FAR from quiet, even newer.  Trying to build your own is not worth the cost when you can get something pre-built from e-bay, (or a reburbisher for a little more money).  Yes the workstations have 600-1000 watt power supplies, but they are very efficient gold or platinum units, and the machines idle at less than 100 watts anyway.

 

I have 2 XW9400's one with 64GB, and one with 32GB, they run just fine, both with 2.6Ghz 115Watt TDP Opterons. One is running Windows Server 2016 Eval, and the other is running some flavor of Linux, both run with no issues, and without a major impact on my electric bill.  To play with VMware ESXi, I've got an old Dell (that Dell doesn't claim) with three dual Opteron motherboards in it, each with 2 12 core Opteron 2419 EE Opteron Socket F CPUs, (60watt TDP) 48 GB of RAM, and 4 (12 total) 1TB SATA HD's.  It's all in a 2U box, with a single 400 Watt, yes 400 watt, power supply, 3 full machines, for the same power as 1 desktop.  Gotta make sure the fans are all running, and the air dams are in the right place so the cooling is directed properly, but it runs well, runs cheap, and does everything I need for virtualization.  I'd recommend one of these, but you can't find them anymore, cost was REALLY cheap, with all the CPU's RAM and HDs, was about $225 with shipping.  It was so cheap, I picked up a bare bones unit for another $100 just for spare parts.

 

[GDRRiley]

4 minutes ago, Mwoody said:

Yes, they are old, But not that power hungry.  The DDR2 ECC RAM is REALLY cheap, and so are the CPU's.  You have to look at workstation or server class machines to get over 32GB of RAM in a desktop machine.  You can go newer workstation class too, that would use DDR3 ECC memory, and newer CPU, just remember as you go newer cost goes up.  Most server class machines are not super power efficient and they are FAR from quiet, even newer.  Trying to build your own is not worth the cost when you can get something pre-built from e-bay, (or a reburbisher for a little more money).  Yes the workstations have 600-1000 watt power supplies, but they are very efficient gold or platinum units, and the machines idle at less than 100 watts anyway.

 

I have 2 XW9400's one with 64GB, and one with 32GB, they run just fine, both with 2.6Ghz 115Watt TDP Opterons. One is running Windows Server 2016 Eval, and the other is running some flavor of Linux, both run with no issues, and without a major impact on my electric bill.  To play with VMware ESXi, I've got an old Dell (that Dell doesn't claim) with three dual Opteron motherboards in it, each with 2 12 core Opteron 2419 EE Opteron Socket F CPUs, (60watt TDP) 48 GB of RAM, and 4 (12 total) 1TB SATA HD's.  It's all in a 2U box, with a single 400 Watt, yes 400 watt, power supply, 3 full machines, for the same power as 1 desktop.  Gotta make sure the fans are all running, and the air dams are in the right place so the cooling is directed properly, but it runs well, runs cheap, and does everything I need for virtualization.  I'd recommend one of these, but you can't find them anymore, cost was REALLY cheap, with all the CPU's RAM and HDs, was about $225 with shipping.  It was so cheap, I picked up a bare bones unit for another $100 just for spare parts.

 

they are, DDR2 per GB isn't cheaper than DDR3. I can get a decent 2011 or 2011-3 or 1366 for 10-40$. high clock quads, 6 or 8 cores

the chips you listed are 6 cores which is the best you can get on F. even in 2014 sites like STH were saying these are bad power vs performance chips.