Need Powerful Workstation/Server First Time Help

Fuzzyw89 · September 1, 2022

Starting a new endeavor at work, analyzing digital forensic data. Right now it’s me and a partner who both have fairly powerful workstations (TRP 3995x, 256gb RAM, 2x RTX A6000). We are looking to expand, to have two systems each, but don’t quite have the room for two workstations towers at our desks, plus the switching back and forth between two whole systems. My idea would be to get something like a “server,” that’s two of these combined like the EK 7000 rack with two EPYCs and 4 GPUs and share it. Furthermore, as a single powerhouse, this would allow us to run some more intensive software. However, I’m new to the whole shared computer thing, and I don’t know what software/os is needed or the best way to simply use our workstations to access the rack via Ethernet or something like that, where we can both use the same instance of Microsoft on the rack as second systems when needed or to use the other more intensive software singularly. Lastly, right now we have raid 14tb of NVME storage internal, with desktop external backup of 108tb for storage connect via usb but it’s unshared. In the process we would like to set up a NAS or some sort of shared storage. To be able to share our files not only between ourselves and the existing workstation but with the rack as well. Any help in how to set this up like we need/I imagine. The software whether windows server is the best option, or unRAID, with windows on the main rack. I would greatly appreciate some direction or citing of other threads that might help.

Electronics Wizardy · September 1, 2022

What os do you need for your workload? Windows? If so Id probably just put windows server on it. Then id put windows server on it. 2 people can remote in at a time, and both users can use all the resources. Do you need a high quality interface when using the server or can you just kick off a job over ssd. What type of work are you doing?

Id look into the 4u gpu servers. You can put up to 8 gpus in them.

Nas makes a lot of sense here. Might as well go rackmount. you cam go diy, or get something like a synology. And with that much storage you probably want 10gbe. I'd go truenas here for the OS, unraid is pretty slow as its a single disk at a time.