Should I swap cases on my home servers?

[S1lver]

I currently have 2 server machines in my home and plan to add 2 more in the future,

With that in mind should I change from tower cases to rack server chassis or stay with what I'm using now? (Both cheap roswill mid towers) if so what features or size would be recommended for someone who's never built in a rack mountable case?

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, S1lver said:

I currently have 2 server machines in my home and plan to add 2 more in the future,

With that in mind should I change from tower cases to rack server chassis or stay with what I'm using now? (Both cheap roswill mid towers) if so what features or size would be recommended for someone who's never built in a rack mountable case?

Sounds like throwing good money after bad. How about a used shelf off Craigslist?  Used racks are cheap but the things that go in them aren’t.  Also you’d be buying a lot of new parts because rack

mount stuff is usually a different form factor.

[LIGISTX]

20 hours ago, S1lver said:

I currently have 2 server machines in my home and plan to add 2 more in the future,

With that in mind should I change from tower cases to rack server chassis or stay with what I'm using now? (Both cheap roswill mid towers) if so what features or size would be recommended for someone who's never built in a rack mountable case?

I guess the real question is…. Why have so many servers for home use? What are each of their functions?

[S1lver]

2 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

I guess the real question is…. Why have so many servers for home use? What are each of their functions?

One machine is  my Nas and does bare metal backup for my family's computers and the other hosts a minecraft server for family and friends (also using this server to play around with linux). The reason for having more than one machine I'm working with used hardware I have on hand and can't afford to build a threadripper or epyc system 

[Needfuldoer]

A rack shelf is cheaper than an ATX rack mount chassis.

 

Look into used Xeon v3 and v4 servers and workstations. Once you've got your foot in the door with a "real" server platform, core counts and RAM capacity go up dramatically from their desktop counterparts. (And they're cheap once they're rotated out of datacenters or too old for VMWare.) You could probably do everything with one big machine instead of a bunch of random desktops.

[LIGISTX]

8 hours ago, S1lver said:

One machine is  my Nas and does bare metal backup for my family's computers and the other hosts a minecraft server for family and friends (also using this server to play around with linux). The reason for having more than one machine I'm working with used hardware I have on hand and can't afford to build a threadripper or epyc system 

What hardware is in each one? This could rather easily be virtualized so you only need a single machine. 
 

My previous homelab was an i3 6100 and 28 GB of ECC RAM, and that hosted truenas, multiple linux server VM’s, windows LTSC, hole assistant, a bunch of docker containers, and a Plex server. You don’t need an Epyc cpu to consolidate things down to a single box. 
 

I built my current server a few months ago. 28 thread Xeon, 64 GB of ECC RAM, noctua heatsink for LGA2011, nvme SSD for boot/VM storage, PCIe card for ssid NVMe drive, and a nice Supermicro mobo. That all was under 550 bucks… CPU was like 75, RAM was 250, mobo was 200 all used from ebay. 

[S1lver]

12 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

What hardware is in each one? This could rather easily be virtualized so you only need a single machine. 
 

My previous homelab was an i3 6100 and 28 GB of ECC RAM, and that hosted truenas, multiple linux server VM’s, windows LTSC, hole assistant, a bunch of docker containers, and a Plex server. You don’t need an Epyc cpu to consolidate things down to a single box. 
 

I built my current server a few months ago. 28 thread Xeon, 64 GB of ECC RAM, noctua heatsink for LGA2011, nvme SSD for boot/VM storage, PCIe card for ssid NVMe drive, and a nice Supermicro mobo. That all was under 550 bucks… CPU was like 75, RAM was 250, mobo was 200 all used from ebay. 

The minecraft server is running on a ryzen 7 5700G with 32GB of 3600mhz ram, my Nas machine is being run off of a phenom2 quad core cpu with 8-16GB ram. I'm thinking about building another server using the i5 2500k that's left over from my old gaming pc but idk what I'd use it for just yet maybe a router or dns cache

[LIGISTX]

12 minutes ago, S1lver said:

The minecraft server is running on a ryzen 7 5700G with 32GB of 3600mhz ram, my Nas machine is being run off of a phenom2 quad core cpu with 8-16GB ram. I'm thinking about building another server using the i5 2500k that's left over from my old gaming pc but idk what I'd use it for just yet maybe a router or dns cache

You can likely virtualize the nas and Minecraft servers and consolidate to a single box. And for router and DNS cache…. If you actually wanted to do that, you can easily run pfsense virtually next to whatever your NAS OS is on a 2500. 

[S1lver]

14 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

You can likely virtualize the nas and Minecraft servers and consolidate to a single box. And for router and DNS cache…. If you actually wanted to do that, you can easily run pfsense virtually next to whatever your NAS OS is on a 2500. 

My Nas os is windows server 2016 it was 2012 r2 essentials

[LIGISTX]

45 minutes ago, S1lver said:

My Nas os is windows server 2016 it was 2012 r2 essentials

You can use windows server to virtualize things under it, or run that virtually next to other things with a hypervisor like ESXi or proxmox. No need to have individual boxes for each application. 

[Needfuldoer]

1 hour ago, S1lver said:

My Nas os is windows server 2016 it was 2012 r2 essentials

Run your applications inside Hyper-V. 

[Jarsky]

instead of having 4 low end machines, why not save to get a better single machine and just have 1 ATX sized server virtualised doing it all? 

It will be far more efficient on power, generate less heat and noise, and less parts to go wrong. 

[MonkeyBomb]

What's the max system utilization on your minecraft server? I know people running a mine craft server on a 3rd (I believe) Intel Nuc, so I wouldn't image it takes a lot of resources.

 

If you moved your WIndows Server license to the Ryzen 7 machine, you should be able to run both the mine craft and nas software on their own VM's. If you are running your NAs software on a phenom2, then it'd easily run in a VM on the Ryzen.

 

Depending on what software you are using to backup the household desktops you may be able to use it to backup your VM's as well.

 

Probably still have enough headroom for Pfsense and/or something like PiHole as neither need many resources.

[S1lver]

On 8/21/2022 at 11:56 PM, Jarsky said:

instead of having 4 low end machines, why not save to get a better single machine and just have 1 ATX sized server virtualised doing it all? 

It will be far more efficient on power, generate less heat and noise, and less parts to go wrong. 

I'm not confident in operating everything in a virtual environment and building dedicated machines using spare parts I have on hand was much simpler.

[S1lver]

Idk about cpu usage but I dedicate 30Gb of my ram to the minecraft server leaving 2gb for Linux to use in the background because I'm using 50+ plugins and I'm running 5 worlds at once (I use multiverse to simulate a bungiecord network). I'm not even sure if I can run server 2016 as a vm on top of true nas and still have enough resources for the minecraft server 

[Jarsky]

35 minutes ago, S1lver said:

I'm not confident in operating everything in a virtual environment and building dedicated machines using spare parts I have on hand was much simpler.

using an OS like UnRAID which gives you a user friendly GUI for creating virtual machines, makes it extremely simple. Or most common applications there is a Docker Container which can be even more simple, since it packages all the prerequisits, and you just have your config/userdata in another location. 

 

Also, you don't need an Epyc or a Threadripper to run backup & a minecraft server. Even an i5 or a Ryzen 5 should easily handle most home server requirements. 

You said you have a Ryzen 7 5700G already for your minecraft server, thats plenty of power to run a Minecraft server, backup server, Pihole, etc...

 

People get stuck in this idea that they need dedicated cores for absolutely everything. Utilization on things like Pihole or backup software is very low, so they will happily share cores without an issue. 

 

21 minutes ago, S1lver said:

Idk about cpu usage but I dedicate 30Gb of my ram to the minecraft server leaving 2gb for Linux to use in the background because I'm using 50+ plugins and I'm running 5 worlds at once (I use multiverse to simulate a bungiecord network). I'm not even sure if I can run server 2016 as a vm on top of true nas and still have enough resources for the minecraft server 

If you're running that much as far as Minecraft, this is where resources start to become an issue. Not so much CPU, but the memory and disk IO.

So then maybe keep that machine dedicated, and just have a single machine for everything else. And just have 2 towers?

If you really must rackmount them, its gonna get expensive buying 4 rackmount cases.

 

Even if you get just something like Rosewill RSV R4000's you're looking at least $800 for 4 cases. Then the rack on top of that.

e.g https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rsv-r4000u-black/p/N82E16811147326

 

Also if youre going to have normal size coolers, ATX PSU etc..youre going to need the 4U cases, which means you need a bare minimum of a 16RU rack. 

Thats a lot of space to take up, and ~20RU racks start getting quite large. Probably the most cost effective racks at that size are the Open Frames, like this StarTech rack which is about $250 iirc. https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Open-Frame-Server-Rack/dp/B084NXSLTG

 

You could get a rack and just buy some shelves and lie the towers on the shelves if your existing towers are smaller than 19" tall. 

e.g https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Server-Rack-Shelf-Cantilever/dp/B008X3JHJQ

 

[Bombastinator]

55 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

using an OS like UnRAID which gives you a user friendly GUI for creating virtual machines, makes it extremely simple. Or most common applications there is a Docker Container which can be even more simple, since it packages all the prerequisits, and you just have your config/userdata in another location. 

 

Also, you don't need an Epyc or a Threadripper to run backup & a minecraft server. Even an i5 or a Ryzen 5 should easily handle most home server requirements. 

You said you have a Ryzen 7 5700G already for your minecraft server, thats plenty of power to run a Minecraft server, backup server, Pihole, etc...

 

People get stuck in this idea that they need dedicated cores for absolutely everything. Utilization on things like Pihole or backup software is very low, so they will happily share cores without an issue. 

 

If you're running that much as far as Minecraft, this is where resources start to become an issue. Not so much CPU, but the memory and disk IO.

So then maybe keep that machine dedicated, and just have a single machine for everything else. And just have 2 towers?

If you really must rackmount them, its gonna get expensive buying 4 rackmount cases.

 

Even if you get just something like Rosewill RSV R4000's you're looking at least $800 for 4 cases. Then the rack on top of that.

e.g https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rsv-r4000u-black/p/N82E16811147326

 

Also if youre going to have normal size coolers, ATX PSU etc..youre going to need the 4U cases, which means you need a bare minimum of a 16RU rack. 

Thats a lot of space to take up, and ~20RU racks start getting quite large. Probably the most cost effective racks at that size are the Open Frames, like this StarTech rack which is about $250 iirc. https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Open-Frame-Server-Rack/dp/B084NXSLTG

 

You could get a rack and just buy some shelves and lie the towers on the shelves if your existing towers are smaller than 19" tall. 

e.g https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Server-Rack-Shelf-Cantilever/dp/B008X3JHJQ

 

Everyone whines about how crappy the 5700g is.  I kind of like it.  It’s got some hardcore limitations.  It will never be quite as fast as a 5700x, but it’s also not nearly as expensive.  The two big ones seem to be that it will only put 8lanes of pcie3 to a graphics card, so anything with more power than a 2070super ranges on pointless. The other is of course that it doesn’t do pcie4 at all.  For lower end machines that don’t HAVE either of these things it’s fine though. Iirc there is also a memory speed limit, but again memory that breaks that is too expensive for something low end anyway.  It’s a great chip for a cheap build.  It’s a terrible chip for a not cheap build, but if the build is cheap I don’t get the whining.