Server Questions

[TatorTotKing]

Hey guys! So, I'm starting college this summer for networking and I am super excited, however, I am trying to get a slight head start in becoming more knowledgable. 

I wanna get a server sometime in the near future, preferably a rack server. I'm looking to host game servers for a lot of my friends, etc. My question to y'all is what should I get and any other tips y'all may have. I am completely comfortable building my own if it is cheaper as well. 

 

Thanks in advance for any tips y'all got!

 

[Fasauceome]

Rack server? Do you have the shelf to put it on? They're pretty unwieldy if you don't have the equipment. Also, basic tower chassis servers are very easy to come by. What games do you want to run servers for? You may not need much power.

[Crunchy Dragon]

What are you trying to run? How much do you have to spend?

 

As @fasauceome mentioned, rackmounted servers can be tough to store if you don't have a place to keep it.

Personally, I prefer tower servers(I own one personally).

 

They have less limitations than most rackmounts, and are a little easier to store without needing a ton of shelf space or a server rack.

Also, way easier to upgrade.

[TatorTotKing]

Just now, fasauceome said:

Rack server? Do you have the shelf to put it on? They're pretty unwieldy if you don't have the equipment. Also, basic tower chassis servers are very easy to come by. What games do you want to run servers for? You may not need much power.

Going into IT eventually, I want to build up some equipment so I plan on getting a server rack. My girlfriend and I are planning on buying a house and she doesn't want a lot of towers in the office, so she wants me to use the closet (gonna install some good ventilation in there for temp control). So, doing towers isn't really a good option for me. I plan on running Minecraft servers, (heavily modded), FiveM servers (Also lots of mods) and a couple others that I can't recall the names of at the moment. I was also considering using it for CCTV storage, is that recommendable? 

[TatorTotKing]

Just now, Crunchy Dragon said:

What are you trying to run? How much do you have to spend?

 

As @fasauceome mentioned, rackmounted servers can be tough to store if you don't have a place to keep it.

Personally, I prefer tower servers(I own one personally).

 

They have less limitations than most rackmounts, and are a little easier to store without needing a ton of shelf space or a server rack.

Also, way easier to upgrade.

That is true, I may have to figure out a way to build something to make a closet better to use towers in. Haha

[Turretgaming]

Rosewill RSV-R4000 or RSV-L4000 case depending on cooling needs and FreeNAS as the OS as you can run plugins and VMs for your game servers. For CPU something with 8 cores and higher than 3ghz clock speed will be fine and 32 gigs of ram for the base os and your VMs is a good start but moving up to 64GB in the future as the load or need increases. 

 

EDIT: FreeNAS has a built in minecraft server plugin that's easy to use.

[TatorTotKing]

Just now, Turretgaming said:

Rosewill RSV-R4000 or RSV-L4000 case depending on cooling needs and FreeNAS as the OS as you can run plugins and VMs for your game servers. For CPU something with 8 cores and higher than 3ghz clock speed will be fine and 32 gigs of ram for the base os and your VMs is a good start but moving up to 64GB in the future as the load or need increases. 

What speed do you recommend for the RAM? 3000 ish?

[Fasauceome]

4 minutes ago, TatorTotKing said:

Going into IT eventually, I want to build up some equipment so I plan on getting a server rack. My girlfriend and I are planning on buying a house and she doesn't want a lot of towers in the office, so she wants me to use the closet (gonna install some good ventilation in there for temp control). So, doing towers isn't really a good option for me. I plan on running Minecraft servers, (heavily modded), FiveM servers (Also lots of mods) and a couple others that I can't recall the names of at the moment. I was also considering using it for CCTV storage, is that recommendable? 

I think for Minecraft you can start basic with a cheap tower and once you know what you're getting into, a rack mount will do. Minecraft likes single threaded, so a last gen CPU would probably actually do nicely. In fact, maybe you can go with an i3 or i5 and then turn the server into a HTPC when you're through with it and moved on to a rack.

[TatorTotKing]

Just now, fasauceome said:

I think for Minecraft you can start basic with a cheap tower and once you know what you're getting into, a rack mount will do. Minecraft likes single threaded, so a last gen CPU would probably actually do nicely. In fact, maybe you can go with an i3 or i5 and then turn the server into a HTPC when you're through with it and moved on to a rack.

I'm actually not familiar with a HTPC, what's the difference? Would a low CPU like i3 be able to run Minecraft mods and FiveM mods at the same time tho?

[Turretgaming]

1 minute ago, TatorTotKing said:

What speed do you recommend for the RAM? 3000 ish?

im using ddr3 at 1600 and its ok my limitation is my cpu its a E3-1245V3 and its a little slow even though its haswell so something newer would be nice. But any speed higher than 1600 is fine freeNAS and servers for your use case care about capacity more than speed. Plus if you go ecc which you should you won't find much over 2333

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id look into a used server for this use. Something like a used dell r720 or r710 is a good bet here. Its normally gonna be cheaper than going diy, and you get to use things like impi to control it.

 

For os, you want a hypervisor here, then you can play with that and networking easily. Look at vmware esxi and proxmox.

[Fasauceome]

1 minute ago, TatorTotKing said:

I'm actually not familiar with a HTPC, what's the difference? Would a low CPU like i3 be able to run Minecraft mods and FiveM mods at the same time tho?

HTPC is just how you use a PC, it's for multimedia use hence "home theater PC". Yeah, an i3 7100 or an i5 7400 (maybe 6400) runs minecraft well enough, I was actually looking at running a server with my X5560 which is much older but would still be adequate.

[Turretgaming]

2 minutes ago, TatorTotKing said:

I'm actually not familiar with a HTPC, what's the difference? Would a low CPU like i3 be able to run Minecraft mods and FiveM mods at the same time tho?

for turnkey minecraft server 4 cores at 3ghz and 8-16gb of ram with 256-500gb of storage is fine. 

(turnkey can be installed as a base os or as a plugin for freenas or ubuntu linux)

[Turretgaming]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id look into a used server for this use. Something like a used dell r720 or r710 is a good bet here. Its normally gonna be cheaper than going diy, and you get to use things like impi to control it.

 

For os, you want a hypervisor here, then you can play with that and networking easily. Look at vmware esxi and proxmox.

unraid or freenas too

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Turretgaming said:

unraid or freenas too

both really aren't great hypervisors(esp freenas) and not used in the IT world. learning vmware esxi is great practice and much more powerfull than those options.

[Turretgaming]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

both really aren't great hypervisors(esp freenas) and not used in the IT world. learning vmware esxi is great practice and much more powerfull than those options.

true but for home use and making it simple so "it just works" (Jensen Huang) thats the way to go. If you need gpu pass through use unraid and if you dont care about gpu pass through then go freenas and they are both lightweight and can be used as a NAS at the same time.

[TatorKing]

4 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

HTPC is just how you use a PC, it's for multimedia use hence "home theater PC". Yeah, an i3 7100 or an i5 7400 (maybe 6400) runs minecraft well enough, I was actually looking at running a server with my X5560 which is much older but would still be adequate.

Ah okay, thank you for the clarification. I will have to look into that for sure!

[Fasauceome]

Just now, TatorKing said:

Ah okay, thank you for the clarification. I will have to look into that for sure!

Did you switch accounts?

[Turretgaming]

Just now, fasauceome said:

Did you switch accounts?

haha i see that too

[TatorKing]

Just now, fasauceome said:

Did you switch accounts?

Didn't even realize I had two accounts... Apparently I logged in with the wrong email.. Awkward.

[TatorTotKing]

3 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

Did you switch accounts?

There we go. Is it possible to delete the other account? I don't even use the other email.. I just thought it was under that one. Lol

[Mikensan]

52 minutes ago, Turretgaming said:

true but for home use and making it simple so "it just works" (Jensen Huang) thats the way to go. If you need gpu pass through use unraid and if you dont care about gpu pass through then go freenas and they are both lightweight and can be used as a NAS at the same time.

Giving school I would still go ESXi, better to go that way now then get too invested into unraid/freenas. ESXi is not complicated until you start throwing things like vCenter / NSX / VROPS / VDI and all the other vmware stuff at it. ESXi's console also works very very well.

 

For a NAS he could just create an unbutu VM and share out his files, or using an HBA ($30 off ebay USD) pass it through to a freeNAS VM.

 

For heavily modded minecrate I can't stress RAM and a SSD enough. Especially if you're going to have 10+ players. I think my modded server had roughly 10 players and I gave it 12GB, by comparison my vanilla server (running bukkit + addons) which had 50 (limited by upload) only used 19GB.

 

Modded minecraft beats on the server because of the elements that keep chunks loaded even when the player is logged out.

[Turretgaming]

21 hours ago, Mikensan said:

Giving school I would still go ESXi, better to go that way now then get too invested into unraid/freenas. ESXi is not complicated until you start throwing things like vCenter / NSX / VROPS / VDI and all the other vmware stuff at it. ESXi's console also works very very well.

 

For a NAS he could just create an unbutu VM and share out his files, or using an HBA ($30 off ebay USD) pass it through to a freeNAS VM.

 

For heavily modded minecrate I can't stress RAM and a SSD enough. Especially if you're going to have 10+ players. I think my modded server had roughly 10 players and I gave it 12GB, by comparison my vanilla server (running bukkit + addons) which had 50 (limited by upload) only used 19GB.

 

Modded minecraft beats on the server because of the elements that keep chunks loaded even when the player is logged out.

Alright you got me there

[MindServ]

If you want to have a server that you can use to gain real experience with both hardware and software I would suggest getting your hands on a used rack server from HP, Dell, IBM or something like that. 

Enterprise servers offer so much more features than regular "PC based" ones. Though it's nothing wrong with having both! Home built servers are after all, in general, quite fast and cheap!

 

Often you can find used servers quite cheap because almost no company that use enterprise grade hardware want to reuse "old" equipment for new purposes, most of the time they just get new and fresh hardware.

Also, you should definitely throw in something like a Cisco switch too, perhaps a Catalyst 3750G, quite cheap but with a lot of features. 

 

But a word of warning: enterprise grade servers are LOUD!! I mean you need hearing protection loud!