Server Build Ideas

[Big Head Tech]

So I am gathering ideas for a server build for my Fiancee and myself when I actually find a house and move into it (a whole other story).  Right now our rigs are solid and was originally going to do a virtual machine.  But I decided it didn't make economical sense to do so.  So now I decided to do a server for backup and storage purposes.  Probably going to use either 2 1TB SSD's in raid 1 or 4 in raid 10.  But here is my question.  I have a random I3-2100 laying around, but I also can get dual Xeon LGA 775 boards with ram and case for under 200.  But the issue I am seeing is lack of gigabit Ethernet and SATA 2 vs SATA 3.  Thoughts?

[Samfisher]

SSD's in raid 1 or 4 in raid 10? What? I don't even understand this sentence.  Also Raid 10 requires a minimum of 4 drives.

[Big Head Tech]

4 minutes ago, Samfisher said:

SSD's in raid 1 or 4 in raid 10? What? I don't even understand this sentence.  Also Raid 10 requires a minimum of 4 drives.

2 SSD's running in raid 1

or

4 SSD's running in raid 10?

[Samfisher]

1 minute ago, Snaeb said:

2 SSD's running in raid 1

or

4 SSD's running in raid 10?

Well technically 10 will always be better than 0 or 1 as you get the benefits of both.  Really depends on your budget.  Lack of Gigabit would be a problem anyway cos you're limited to 100Mbps transfer speeds unless you install your own NICs. And the lack of SATA3 would mean the transfers would be slow either way  With a 10/100 NIC, you'd be transferring at a max of 12Megabytes/s which is about 9 times slower than a standard USB3.0 external HDD and twice as slow as the faster USB2.0 ones.

[Streetguru]

14 minutes ago, Snaeb said:

So I am gathering ideas for a server build for my Fiancee and myself when I actually find a house and move into

Just go for a new i3 with ECC memory man, unless you were trying to do this for really cheap, then just go AM1

 

and I wouldn't say SSDs make for good long term storage, they may be more reliable than hard drives but once they run out of writes they're done, and if you have 2 new drives and put them straight into a RAID 1 chances are they're going to die at the same time and all your data is gone, speed isn't something to really worry about for a home back up server, you'd want to focus on data integrity.
 
https://forum.teksyndicate.com/uploads/default/original/3X/e/4/e4a03e7a255b02a1ea7c563f7e9e516250d5c960.jpg

https://forum.teksyndicate.com/t/cheap-nas-starting-point-i3-8gbs-of-ecc/93218

[Inception9269]

Some variation of this would probably be decent for a home server, I'd think.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-2100 3.1GHz Dual-Core Processor
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4-M Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($21.79 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($327.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($327.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($87.88 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($87.88 @ OutletPC)
Case: Silverstone PS08B (Black) MicroATX Mid Tower Case  ($35.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 450W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply  ($59.16 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $948.67
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-03 23:40 EST-0500

 

I say stick with the i3-2100, it having features those old xeons don't.

there wasn't any good motherboard listings that had prices, so for that you'd probably have to look around, preferably one with 4 sata 6gb/s

As for memory pretty sure servers don't need a lot, if just for storing things to, so 4gb should be enough i believe.

As for storage i just put placeholders for the ssds. not sure which ones you're considering, but you said 1tb ones so i put two samsung ones there.

As for the setup, I'd recommend running those 1tb ssds in raid 0 for 2tb total, and have those 2tb WD red drives in raid 1, and have the ssds backup to it.

Case is subjective, just went with a decent, cheap one that had at least 4 hdd slots.

[Big Head Tech]

1 minute ago, Inception9269 said:

Some variation of this would probably be decent for a home server, I'd think.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-2100 3.1GHz Dual-Core Processor
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4-M Micro ATX LGA1155 Motherboard
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($21.79 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($327.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($327.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($87.88 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($87.88 @ OutletPC)
Case: Silverstone PS08B (Black) MicroATX Mid Tower Case  ($35.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 450W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply  ($59.16 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $948.67
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-03 23:40 EST-0500

 

I say stick with the i3-2100, it having features those old xeons don't.

there wasn't any good motherboard listings that had prices, so for that you'd probably have to look around, preferably one with 4 sata 6gb/s

As for memory pretty sure servers don't need a lot, if just for storing things to, so 4gb should be enough i believe.

As for storage i just put placeholders for the ssds. not sure which ones you're considering, but you said 1tb ones so i put two samsung ones there.

As for the setup, I'd recommend running those 1tb ssds in raid 0 for 2tb total, and have those 2tb WD red drives in raid 1, and have the ssds backup to it.

Case is subjective, just went with a decent, cheap one that had at least 4 hdd slots.

I do plan on using it to access games for both of the main PC's.  Basically keeping the main PC's clean of files.  So the server will be accessed alot.

[brob]

With only a couple of users, SSD in this scenario are wasted. Go for hdd in RAID 1 or 10, HGST Deskstar NAS or WD Red.

 

For hdd, SATA II is more than enough. Depending on the o/s, performance can be improved with additional memory.

 

Intel ARK does not show the i3-2100 supporting ECC memory.

 

One can always add a gigabit network card.

[Streetguru]

2 minutes ago, Snaeb said:

I do plan on using it to access games for both of the main PC's.  Basically keeping the main PC's clean of files.  So the server will be accessed alot.

That doesn't sound like a good idea exactly, just throw a 1TB drive on each PC

[Big Head Tech]

Just now, Streetguru said:

That doesn't sound like a good idea exactly, just throw a 1TB drive on each PC

I am starting to think a 5,000 dollar virtual machine is a better idea lol.

[Streetguru]

1 minute ago, Snaeb said:

I am starting to think a 5,000 dollar virtual machine is a better idea lol.

You could get 2 fairly capable gaming rigs for that, with 4k displays, and still have money in the budget for a proper back up server with ECC memory.

[brob]

Just now, Snaeb said:

I am starting to think a 5,000 dollar virtual machine is a better idea lol.

No. When a critical part goes down one looses all computing. Asymmetric upgrades are not possible.

[Big Head Tech]

1 minute ago, Streetguru said:

You could get 2 fairly capable gaming rigs for that, with 4k displays, and still have money in the budget for a proper back up server with ECC memory.

We already have 2 capable gaming PC's, but I am moving us both to 3440x1440 so she will need a GPU upgrade.

Just now, brob said:

No. When a critical part goes down one looses all computing. Asymmetric upgrades are not possible.

Ya I was considering a 10 Core Xeon with 64GB of ram and 2 1TB SSD's with 4 1TB HDD's in Raid 10, but add in another 980 Ti will push it over 5 grand with newer monitors.

[Streetguru]

Just now, Snaeb said:

We already have 2 capable gaming PC's, but I am moving us both to 3440x1440 so she will need a GPU up

Ultra Wide 1440p displays are generally a bad buy as you can get 4k displays for less that give you more pixels,

 

Why would you need a 10 Core Xeon for a back up server?

[Big Head Tech]

Just now, Streetguru said:

Ultra Wide 1440p displays are generally a bad buy as you can get 4k displays for less that give you more pixels,

 

Why would you need a 10 Core Xeon for a back up server?

As a virtual machine running 2 gaming instances.  I currently am at 4k, but we are more like 75% productivity 25% casual gaming.  

[Streetguru]

1 minute ago, Snaeb said:

As a virtual machine running 2 gaming instances.  I currently am at 4k, but we are more like 75% productivity 25% casual gaming.  

Well then stick with 4k, and there's no reason to put all of your eggs in one basket with a single machine running virtual machines for gaming, just keep the gaming rigs separate so you have redundancy and dedicated areas for things.

[Big Head Tech]

Just now, Streetguru said:

Well then stick with 4k, and there's no reason to put all of your eggs in one basket with a single machine running virtual machines for gaming, just keep the gaming rigs separate so you have redundancy and dedicated areas for things.

That was my point, but I wanted to keep all the data off the PC's in case of data loss, crash, virus's etc.  But you guys are saying accessing the server constantly is no bueno.

[Streetguru]

Just now, Snaeb said:

That was my point, but I wanted to keep all the data off the PC's in case of data loss, crash, virus's etc.  But you guys are saying accessing the server constantly is no bueno.

It would kill your SSDs even faster, just build a tiny NAS for data back up and you're set.

[brob]

1 hour ago, Streetguru said:

It would kill your SSDs even faster, just build a tiny NAS for data back up and you're set.

SSD are not that short lived. In fact I would venture to say that it is likely the average ssd will outlast the average hdd given the same volume.

[Streetguru]

2 minutes ago, brob said:

SSD are not that short lived. In fact I would venture to say that it is likely the average ssd will outlast the average hdd given the same volume.

but once an SSD is dead it's just completely dead, with a hard drive unless there's massive platter damage there's usually the chance to get your data back

[brob]

13 hours ago, Streetguru said:

but once an SSD is dead it's just completely dead, with a hard drive unless there's massive platter damage there's usually the chance to get your data back

Not so. HDD and SSD recovery are both possible. However the cost to do so can be extreme and recovery is generally not worth it. SSD generally provide ample warning when they start to fail. One just has to pay attention.

 

Regardless of media, data to be retained for many years should either be renewed on new media every year or two or stored on certified archival media and renewed per specs.

[Inception9269]

13 hours ago, Streetguru said:

but once an SSD is dead it's just completely dead, with a hard drive unless there's massive platter damage there's usually the chance to get your data back

 

Which is why I suggested the guy also get WD red drives to do backups often. Although nightly backups like Linus always goes on about in my opinion is completely over kill and pointless. unless you're running a business I'd say every few days to a week is a fair amount of time for backups, if you're going to run them in raid.