What kind of servers should I buy?

[LA5426]

Hi guys, 

 

I work for a small company and we're (finally) in a position to buy some servers from eBay, albeit on a budget.

 

We'll be running a bunch of VMs
1. Domain controller

2. serveral low traffic web  servers

3. sql servers

3. NAS

4. Exchange Server with around 100-150 customers with 10GB each

5. we'll probably run home assistant and a plex server if there's excess capacity  

 

High availability isn't *too* important right now so we'll only be purchasing 1 or 2 servers. Initially, we'll be using Barracuda HDDs and Evo 860 SDDs (again, tight budget), but will upgrade to Iron Wolves and used fusion IOdrives later. 

 

As this will be my first time purchasing a server, hope you guys can give me some guidance and tips on what to watch out for.

 

Right of the bat, I'm stuck in limbo :

a. Do I get 2 servers? 1 will be used as a application server - high memory and core count, the other will be used as a SAN with very light load VMs, or

b. get 1 server with 16 bays and dual cpu's with 20+ cores?

 

 

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id really just go cloud here if possible, works better for a lot of small buinesses.

 

11 minutes ago, LA5426 said:

used fusion IOdrives later.

Id stay away from these, drivers are a pain, and nvme drives aren't much more

 

11 minutes ago, LA5426 said:

using Barracuda HDDs

Stay away, most are smr now.

 

Id try to get used datacenter/server ssds, there much better, and about the same price.

 

Whats your budget? How much storage do you need?

 

Whats your plan if this fails? Do the customers have a SLA? Id really just do email in the cloud. How long can it be down for?

 

Id probably do one system here, but if you need uptime, get 2 of them. Nothing here seems to need much hardware, so a 8+ core config should be plenty. Id probably aim for 64gb + of ram.

 

 

[LA5426]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id stay away from these, drivers are a pain, and nvme drives aren't much more

Don' t know why I didn't think of this. Quick search on ebay yielded me this 960GB Enterprise SSD Samsung MZ-QLB9600 PM983 2.5" U.2 MZQLB960HAJR-00007 818240534656 | eBay. In the description, it says comes with NVMe U.2 sff-8639 connector - this is needed in order the connect to the SAS/SATA backplane, right? Does this also mean I can connect it to a PC via SATA? 

 

On hard drives, any brands in particular? Eyeing Seagate Exos 4TB.

 

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id really just go cloud here if possible, works better for a lot of small businesses.

Since we're building a NAS, a local dev env and some other fun things, we thought why not make it generate revenue as well.  Our important stuff / high traffic are already in the cloud  Still discussing whether emails will be brought in house.

 

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Stay away, most are smr now.

Got it. Will only be using them temporarily anyway

 

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Whats your budget? How much storage do you need?

 

800-1000USD. My current config has 2x 1TB SSD in Mirror  and 4x 2TB HDD 3+1 hot spare using Storage Spaces.

 

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id probably do one system here, but if you need uptime, get 2 of them. Nothing here seems to need much hardware, so a 8+ core config should be plenty. Id probably aim for 64gb + of ram.

R710's are very compelling but the performance difference against E2600 v3/4 is huge, and in terms of price, I get more core and "newer" components. What do you think?

 

 

In terms of CPU upgradability, did I understand this right E2600 -> E2600v2 and E2600v3 -> E2600v4 ?

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 hours ago, LA5426 said:

Don' t know why I didn't think of this. Quick search on ebay yielded me this 960GB Enterprise SSD Samsung MZ-QLB9600 PM983 2.5" U.2 MZQLB960HAJR-00007 818240534656 | eBay. In the description, it says comes with NVMe U.2 sff-8639 connector - this is needed in order the connect to the SAS/SATA backplane, right? Does this also mean I can connect it to a PC via SATA? 

 

Those are nvme drives, they can't be converted to sata. Great if the case supports nvme 2.5in drives, but Id get sata/sas if it doesnt'

 

8 hours ago, LA5426 said:

Since we're building a NAS, a local dev env and some other fun things, we thought why not make it generate revenue as well.  Our important stuff / high traffic are already in the cloud  Still discussing whether emails will be brought in house.

 

What internet connection are you hosting with? Most won't support hosting email.

 

Also a lot of places get pickly about marking as spam.

 

Your also gonna have a lot more downtime than a large provider, and you don't want downtime for email.

 

Id really suggest cloud for email.

 

8 hours ago, LA5426 said:

Got it. Will only be using them temporarily anyway

 

I wouldn't even use those as a temp drive. The smr performance is awful

 

8 hours ago, LA5426 said:

800-1000USD. My current config has 2x 1TB SSD in Mirror  and 4x 2TB HDD 3+1 hot spare using Storage Spaces.

 

What model drives do you have now?

 

8 hours ago, LA5426 said:

710's are very compelling but the performance difference against E2600 v3/4 is huge, and in terms of price, I get more core and "newer" components. What do you think?

 

 

Id probably go r720 with that budget, and spend the rest on storage + more ram. Your getting a pretty cut down r730 with that budget, and Id rather have a nice r720. Could look at other brands that are cheaper, but normally less common and more of a pain to work on.

 

8 hours ago, LA5426 said:

 

In terms of CPU upgradability, did I understand this right E2600 -> E2600v2 and E2600v3 -> E2600v4 ?

Yea thats right.

[LA5426]

13 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Those are nvme drives, they can't be converted to sata. Great if the case supports nvme 2.5in drives, but Id get sata/sas if it doesnt'

 

Id probably go r720 with that budget, and spend the rest on storage + more ram. Your getting a pretty cut down r730 with that budget, and Id rather have a nice r720. Could look at other brands that are cheaper, but normally less common and more of a pain to work on.

I'm looking at these two right now

HPE Proliant DL380 G9 LFF 2x E5-2680v3 12-Core 2.5GHz 64Gb 2U Server HP Gen9 3A | eBay

I'll have to buy some sleds and swap out the backplane to fully utilize it. but I can upgrade to v4 later

 

Dell PowerEdge R720 3.5 Server, 2x E5-2660V2 2.2GHz 10Core, 64GB, 8x Tray, H710 | eBay

pretty much sold here. will just add more ram then upgrade the cpu later. 

13 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I wouldn't even use those as a temp drive. The smr performance is awful

 

What model drives do you have now?

Seagate Barracudas and Samsung 860s. They're still good enough for our current needs. Installed in a R7 2700x as our dev env. But I agree, we'll have to use enterprise grade stuff for production. We'll tackle this next year when we start moving low priority/traffic production apps in house. 

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, LA5426 said:

I'm looking at these two right now

HPE Proliant DL380 G9 LFF 2x E5-2680v3 12-Core 2.5GHz 64Gb 2U Server HP Gen9 3A | eBay

I'll have to buy some sleds and swap out the backplane to fully utilize it. but I can upgrade to v4 later

 

Dell PowerEdge R720 3.5 Server, 2x E5-2660V2 2.2GHz 10Core, 64GB, 8x Tray, H710 | eBay

pretty much sold here. will just add more ram then upgrade the cpu later. 

Both of those cpus should be more than enough cpu here, what do you need all this cpu power here. I think you think you need more cpu than you really do

 

1 hour ago, LA5426 said:

Seagate Barracudas and Samsung 860s. They're still good enough for our current needs. Installed in a R7 2700x as our dev env. But I agree, we'll have to use enterprise grade stuff for production. We'll tackle this next year when we start moving low priority/traffic production apps in house. 

 

Id really try to go cloud stuff for prod if you can, esp if customers are using it. Your gonna have much more downtime and issues hosting it your self. Your also spending a lot of time setting up servers that you woudln't have to with cloud setups.

[LA5426]

55 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Both of those cpus should be more than enough cpu here, what do you need all this cpu power here. I think you think you need more cpu than you really do

Nah, I'm aware of the severe excess of cores. I'm running lots on an 8core 2700x. i'm just a nerd who likes seeing lots of small blue boxes in task manager 

 

Also, we'll be shipping the servers to the Philippines. R710s with go for 400USD here. Might as well get the best machine we can. Enterprise drives cost 1.25-1.4x too

55 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id really try to go cloud stuff for prod if you can, esp if customers are using it. Your gonna have much more downtime and issues hosting it your self. Your also spending a lot of time setting up servers that you woudln't have to with cloud setups.

Yeah, most of our prod stuff are currently in the cloud, but our problem is bandwidth cost. our clients uploads/downloads huge files into/from the systems. Azure is charging us 50-60USD/month on bandwith alone because we're using VM's and not WebApps.  We're still working on adapting the system to use CDNs but it'll take some time.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, LA5426 said:

Nah, I'm aware of the severe excess of cores. I'm running lots on an 8core 2700x. i'm just a nerd who likes seeing lots of small blue boxes in task manager 

What cpu usage are you seeing on the 2700x now?

 

4 minutes ago, LA5426 said:

Yeah, most of our prod stuff are currently in the cloud, but our problem is bandwidth cost. our clients uploads/downloads huge files into/from the systems. Azure is charging us 50-60USD/month on bandwith alone because we're using VM's and not WebApps.  We're still working on adapting the system to use CDNs but it'll take some time.

Id really push for the cloud. The 50-60 bucks is probably gonna be much cheaper than setting up and mainting a server.

 

What internet connection do you have? A good deticated internet connection isn't cheap, a gig link is about 3k a month where I am.

[LA5426]

8 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What cpu usage are you seeing on the 2700x now?

just around 50-60

8 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id really push for the cloud. The 50-60 bucks is probably gonna be much cheaper than setting up and mainting a server.

 

What internet connection do you have? A good deticated internet connection isn't cheap, a gig link is about 3k a month where I am.

Alright, you got me to change my mind.  Basic business internet with static IP. It's been solid for the last 2 years tho. but yeah, i get the risks.

 

damn you, you talked me out of getting some stuff to play with

[Electronics Wizardy]

53 minutes ago, LA5426 said:

just around 50-60

Alright, you got me to change my mind.  Basic business internet with static IP. It's been solid for the last 2 years tho. but yeah, i get the risks.

 

damn you, you talked me out of getting some stuff to play with

Whats wrong with the 2700x? Id just keep using it for now, should be fine for a dev system.

 

The normal buiness internet is still shared like home internet, and Id really want a sla if I'm hosting stuff for customers.

[LA5426]

Nothing wrong. Just wanted something new to play with. You know, to satisfy that nerd need 

[Blue4130]

7 hours ago, LA5426 said:

Nothing wrong. Just wanted something new to play with. You know, to satisfy that nerd need 

So buy it for yourself. Christmas is coming