New Server For New Business

[trag1c]

Hello LTT. 

I am currently in the process of establishing a new educational games software business with my partner. We have just reached the point where we're ready to start development on our planned products but we're in need of some hardware to aid in development. The server will have a budget of $1500 but this is flexible as long as I can justify the additional expense to my business partner as he is the primary source of funding. 

 

As it stands we have the following requirements (so far):

• Fast read + write speeds.
• Reliable data storage
• Accessible from across the web 
• Ability to host Revision Control Software
• Expandable storage to grow with our business
• Rack Mountable
• Constant up time

This would the primary working server so any wait times in our work flow that we can minimize will greatly increase our efficiency because we're a small team of 2 so there is no one to pick up the slack while we wait for system tasks. Once our cash flow begins we will be buying more server infrastructure and re purposing this server as an backup but until then it will most likely have to be sufficient for 1 - 2 years. Normally I would have no problem putting together a parts list my self but I don't have a clue when it comes to server components. Also a suitable OS recommendation/advice for these requirements would be greatly appreciated. 

 

Edit: forgot to mention that currency is $ CAD

[Blucyrik]

You can add more hard drives down the line. Here's something a bit basic I came up with:

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/mfTtcf

[tt2468]

8 hours ago, Blucyrik said:

You can add more hard drives down the line. Here's something a bit basic I came up with:

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/mfTtcf

That server is kinda unbalanced. Also, $80 for an over $500+ cpu?

[trag1c]

12 hours ago, Blucyrik said:

You can add more hard drives down the line. Here's something a bit basic I came up with:

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/mfTtcf

4 hours ago, Kyle Manning said:

That server is kinda unbalanced. Also, $80 for an over $500+ cpu?

Not to mention that with only 2 drives it really limits what kind of file systems and or RAID is available for it. Sadly that build is really far from ideal or practical.

 

17 hours ago, JaredM54 said:

Do you want to buy new or are you willing to buy used? If new, I would say up the budget to around $2000 and get the Dell R730. If used, probably the R710.

Doesn't matter to me. I am perfectly fine with used.

 

[Blucyrik]

8 hours ago, Kyle Manning said:

That server is kinda unbalanced. Also, $80 for an over $500+ cpu?

Those CPUs are going for under $100 used on ebay, they're 8 core monsters. Also, that's why I stated you could add extra hard drives to make any kind of RAID config you want.

[trag1c]

1 minute ago, Blucyrik said:

Those CPUs are going for under $100 used on ebay, they're 8 core monsters. Also, that's why I stated you could add extra hard drives to make any kind of RAID config you want.

Hmm didn't know that there would that many for that cheap on ebay. Even with shipping and currency conversion I would only pay like ~120 CAD

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, trag1c said:

Doesn't matter to me. I am perfectly fine with used.

 

If you are fine with used then get a previous generation server i.e. HP is currently at Gen 9 so look for Gen 8 on ebay. Since this is rather business critical then this is as old as you should go. Should be fine doesn't really cut it, more so if you don't have masses of cash to throw around. Hard for ebay but if you can purchase an extended 1 or 2 year warranty to go with it this will add some security to the purchase, but on old hardware this can cost more than it is worth. Just something to consider.

 

Self building isn't really advised. I know a lot of people on this forum are tinkerers and love doing this sort of thing but it really doesn't fit a proper business model. You really really need to know what you are doing to match what the hardware vendors can offer, there is more to it than the initial purchase. Warranty and support matters more.

 

Also virtualize now, it will make migration and maintenance easier. Unless you need to do 3D rendering on the server then there is no downside to doing this and gives you more backup options and flexibility.

[trag1c]

20 hours ago, leadeater said:

If you are fine with used then get a previous generation server i.e. HP is currently at Gen 9 so look for Gen 8 on ebay. Since this is rather business critical then this is as old as you should go. Should be fine doesn't really cut it, more so if you don't have masses of cash to throw around. Hard for ebay but if you can purchase an extended 1 or 2 year warranty to go with it this will add some security to the purchase, but on old hardware this can cost more than it is worth. Just something to consider.

 

Self building isn't really advised. I know a lot of people on this forum are tinkerers and love doing this sort of thing but it really doesn't fit a proper business model. You really really need to know what you are doing to match what the hardware vendors can offer, there is more to it than the initial purchase. Warranty and support matters more.

 

Also virtualize now, it will make migration and maintenance easier. Unless you need to do 3D rendering on the server then there is no downside to doing this and gives you more backup options and flexibility.

Visualization is a pretty good idea, get a bit more use of the system that would have large amounts of time spent idle. I am not too worried about assembling our own systems because my business partner and I come from very strong problem solving back grounds. (designing/building/programming robots) Once I get the gist of the software and the hardware involved in a server system I should have very little issues going forward.

[Guest]

Corporate sales hat on..

 

You're best bet is to pickup an E3 1220 ML10v2 from HP or a Pentium version of the same. If you want to have onsite support for the hard drives plus additional RAM you can get them with it through HP however it's cheaper to use off the shelf 3.5" drives and Kingston KTH-PL316ES/4G (Kingston specific for HP).

 

You can get the Pentium version of that server and add in the E3 1220 however I can't recall what happens with the warranty component if you do have an onsite warranty.

 

There are a few reasons why I suggest this server over the DIY route.

 

• Support - depending on localized SKU's, you'll probably end up a 1/1/1 OS warranty meaning 1 year onsite. This means you just call HP, they come fix. They just won't touch any 3rd party RAM or HDD's.
• functionality - those servers have iLo4 built in meaning remote boot as well as remote configuration of other features is supported.
• Entry level RAID controller is included

Note this one isn't rack mountable however I don't see why it needs to be? Are you putting this in a DC? If so, why not RTO through a DC? If you absolutely need rack, put it on a 450mm shelf.

 

As for the OS, Server 2012 R2 Essentials should bundle well with pricing on that ML10 - this comes from experience.

[Bacon8tor]

I have been looking for a cheaper used option , at work to upgrade our infrastructure(to all virtual servers on 2 ESXi host) cause it is severly old. I personally like the price of this and performance 

Ebay Dell R610

 

also for storage something like this Norco Case 20 bay hard drive. and here is the hardware I was thinking about, may not be the best Newegg list \

also I understand this is a bit out of your range, but hopefully helps you out in some way.

 

although VMware license are quite pricey, you could use something like citrix (what I use at home) and love it but I would rather Vmware in the buisness

[Coaxialgamer]

If you are willing to buy used stuff , definitly take a look at the e5 2670's . In fact , you should look at the 12 and 16 core opterons ( 627* ) . In fact , you could biuld a quad opteron 64 core cpu + motherboard combo for like 300$

[trag1c]

Sorry for the late reply but I have quite a few shifts at work lately. 

On 3/4/2016 at 3:49 AM, Windspeed36 said:

Corporate sales hat on..

 

You're best bet is to pickup an E3 1220 ML10v2 from HP or a Pentium version of the same. If you want to have onsite support for the hard drives plus additional RAM you can get them with it through HP however it's cheaper to use off the shelf 3.5" drives and Kingston KTH-PL316ES/4G (Kingston specific for HP).

 

You can get the Pentium version of that server and add in the E3 1220 however I can't recall what happens with the warranty component if you do have an onsite warranty.

 

There are a few reasons why I suggest this server over the DIY route.

 

• Support - depending on localized SKU's, you'll probably end up a 1/1/1 OS warranty meaning 1 year onsite. This means you just call HP, they come fix. They just won't touch any 3rd party RAM or HDD's.
• functionality - those servers have iLo4 built in meaning remote boot as well as remote configuration of other features is supported.
• Entry level RAID controller is included

Note this one isn't rack mountable however I don't see why it needs to be? Are you putting this in a DC? If so, why not RTO through a DC? If you absolutely need rack, put it on a 450mm shelf.

 

As for the OS, Server 2012 R2 Essentials should bundle well with pricing on that ML10 - this comes from experience.

I understand your points with going with a non DIY solution with warranty/support but I think I would be spending a ton more money for a lot less. Because we will be storing a large number of Art source files and sound source files all of which will be at the highest possible quality which requires a lot of data storage. There will also be lower quality copies stored as well. All of these assets will be managed from a versioning software like perforce which will create more copies as the files have changes made to them so that a bad change can be rolled back. I really need to be able to get everything that I can out of this server. I simply don't see the same capability as something that I could build and maintain my self .This not to say I am not open to buying a prebuilt server but I am definitely skeptical of it. 

 

As for the rack mount; it is primarily because we will be adding additional servers (computational servers, backups and archival) once we get later in development.

 

On 3/4/2016 at 11:19 AM, Bacon8tor said:

I have been looking for a cheaper used option , at work to upgrade our infrastructure(to all virtual servers on 2 ESXi host) cause it is severly old. I personally like the price of this and performance 

Ebay Dell R610

 

also for storage something like this Norco Case 20 bay hard drive. and here is the hardware I was thinking about, may not be the best Newegg list \

also I understand this is a bit out of your range, but hopefully helps you out in some way.

 

although VMware license are quite pricey, you could use something like citrix (what I use at home) and love it but I would rather Vmware in the buisness

That R610 looks decent, performance is probably close to my 5820k at stock. I have looked at the Norco case both the 20 and 24 hot swap bays, they look like fantastic  server cases but they're crazy expensive here in Canada ($550+ CAD).  I was thinking this rosewill case which has capacity for 15 3.5'' drives. for like 140 $CAD shipped.

If the Canadian dollar wasn't so weak I would order them from the states but its at least 30% price hit plus shipping.

 

Unfortunately your parts list is not visible. It comes up with a log in page.

On 3/4/2016 at 11:28 AM, Coaxialgamer said:

If you are willing to buy used stuff , definitly take a look at the e5 2670's . In fact , you should look at the 12 and 16 core opterons ( 627* ) . In fact , you could biuld a quad opteron 64 core cpu + motherboard combo for like 300$

I think the only things I would get out of those opterons woulds be a high electrical bill and a space heater. Those Xeons would probably trash those opterons.

[Bacon8tor]

Sry about the link , should be able to see it now. 

Spoiler

 

 

1		NORCO RPC-4220 4U Rackmount Server Chassis w/ 20 Hot-Swappable SATA/SAS 6G Drive Bays (Mini SAS Connector) Item #: N82E16811219033 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy	-$20.00  Instant	$349.99 $329.99
1		ASRock E3C224-4L ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C224 DDR3 1600/1333 Item #: N82E16813157405 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy	-$40.00  Instant	$228.99 $188.99
1		Intel Xeon E3-1220V3 Haswell 3.1GHz LGA 1150 80W Server Processor BX80646E31220V3 Item #: N82E16819116907 Return Policy: Replacement Only Return Policy	-$20.00  Instant	$219.99 $199.99
1		Kingston 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G Item #: N82E16820139979 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy		$102.93
10		WD Re WD1003FBYZ 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive Item #: N82E16822236525 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy	-$41.00 Sale	$1,299.90 $889.90
1		Mushkin Enhanced Ventura Pro 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Model MKNUFDVP32GB USB Specification: USB 3.0 Capacity: 32GB Item #: 9SIA1K63T36977 Sold by Hot Deals 4 Less		$25.54
1		EVGA 220-GS-1050-V1 80 PLUS GOLD 1050 W 7 yr Warranty ECO Mode Fully Modular NVIDIA SLI Ready and Crossfire Support Super Silent continuous Power Supply Maximum Power: 1050W Fans: 1 Modular: Full Modular Model: GS Series Item #: 9SIA1N83U90798 Sold by PC Rush	-$39.79  Instant	$199.99

Hope everything gets going for you. If you want to see what an estimate looks like from a thrid party company (as far as equipment goes), its an ungodly price ticket for upgrade or startup of servers. Mainly I feel because they only will use the Latest models from their respective Vendor (HP, Dell Cisco), then a bit of a markup for themselves. I alreayd made one company cut their bid in half becuase I foudn all the equipment online for half the price, needless to say I prolly wont be going thru them. 

[Dimwitted]

I would pay attention to Windspeed's advice. You need dead nuts reliability with good support. Another thing is a good b/up strategy. Your data is going to be your life. A decent DAT drive is more than your total machine budget.  Offsite caching is mandatory for disaster relief and I don't trust things like the "Cloud".

I would advise getting a quote for a new decent system from Dell or HP sized properly with a support package and do it on a monthly lease. It does lock you in but it works for cashflow and for tax purposes. Your needs are not extreme and you might be surprised how reasonable it is.

[Mikensan]

I second (or third) the r710/r720 or r610/r620. You may want the r7x0 so you can cram more disks in it (being 2u). I currently have 2 slightly older equivalents (Dell C1100, IBM 3650 m2) and they are work horses through and through.

 

Save money on hardware, buy new disks (your pick of the lot from consumer SATA disks), and invest in a backup solution (cloud or otherwise). Get something you won't have to spend time troubleshooting and configuring - that's time you could be developing. I'd get a raid card and throw in ESXI (free license supports 32gb) or Hyper-V. Most R710s have at least 2x1gb NICs which you can team and get some decent throughput. Stick with a Windows environment for everything until you have more staff to spend time on IT issues. Buy your microsoft licenses from Reddit. (bought mine from: https://www.reddit.com/r/microsoftsoftwareswap/comments/3wxfh5/h_windows_7_8_81_10_windows_server_office_visio/)

 

If you do not go virtual, it's really not that hard to go from physical > virtual for small environment. Vmware has a converter utility that clones and then virtualizes your physical boxes. So don't feel pressured to make the plunge to virtual. It's just nice to be able to take a snapshot and revert in the event of failure. 

[leadeater]

13 hours ago, trag1c said:

I understand your points with going with a non DIY solution with warranty/support but I think I would be spending a ton more money for a lot less. Because we will be storing a large number of Art source files and sound source files all of which will be at the highest possible quality which requires a lot of data storage. There will also be lower quality copies stored as well. All of these assets will be managed from a versioning software like perforce which will create more copies as the files have changes made to them so that a bad change can be rolled back. I really need to be able to get everything that I can out of this server. I simply don't see the same capability as something that I could build and maintain my self .This not to say I am not open to buying a prebuilt server but I am definitely skeptical of it. 

I would suggest going half way with prebuilt and build your own. I completely agree that the prices server hardware vendors ask can be way to high and often has too limited options for smaller user deployments that require large amounts of data.

 

You can buy a prebuilt new or used that has the basic parts you want e.g. CPU, minimum ram, dual PSU, HBA (or RAID), no HDD and then upgrade the rest yourself. Kingstonr ram has equivalent parts for every brand out there and then you can use WD Reds/Red Pros/Se. The biggest cost savings in build your own vs prebuilt is in the ram and storage cost.

 

I have done this myself. I purchased a new IBM x3500 M4 base model and upgraded it with 128GB ram, Samsung 840/850 Pro SSD's and WD Reds. This same configuration using qualified IBM parts would have easily cost 10-15 times more.

[trag1c]

On 3/7/2016 at 6:09 AM, Bacon8tor said:

Sry about the link , should be able to see it now. 

Hope everything gets going for you. If you want to see what an estimate looks like from a thrid party company (as far as equipment goes), its an ungodly price ticket for upgrade or startup of servers. Mainly I feel because they only will use the Latest models from their respective Vendor (HP, Dell Cisco), then a bit of a markup for themselves. I alreayd made one company cut their bid in half becuase I foudn all the equipment online for half the price, needless to say I prolly wont be going thru them. 

No worries, I can see it now. Without knowing your drive configuration I can only guess but with all of those Re drives you're probably going to be able to read and write extremely fast. I could imagine, even just shopping prebuilt servers on NCIX and Newegg makes me want to puke. That is a ridiculous mark up. 

On 3/7/2016 at 6:38 AM, Dimwitted said:

I would pay attention to Windspeed's advice. You need dead nuts reliability with good support. Another thing is a good b/up strategy. Your data is going to be your life. A decent DAT drive is more than your total machine budget.  Offsite caching is mandatory for disaster relief and I don't trust things like the "Cloud".

I would advise getting a quote for a new decent system from Dell or HP sized properly with a support package and do it on a monthly lease. It does lock you in but it works for cashflow and for tax purposes. Your needs are not extreme and you might be surprised how reasonable it is.

I recognize the need for support but I have a sneaking suspicion that support from them is going to be overly costly. I have no problem with doing my own trouble shooting as that is a large part of what I do on a daily basis, it would primarily be an inconvenience. Backup plan is to build a small server in a few months as an offsite backup for the production server, till then its going to be a cloud based solution. 

 

On 3/7/2016 at 3:27 PM, Mikensan said:

I second (or third) the r710/r720 or r610/r620. You may want the r7x0 so you can cram more disks in it (being 2u). I currently have 2 slightly older equivalents (Dell C1100, IBM 3650 m2) and they are work horses through and through.

 

Save money on hardware, buy new disks (your pick of the lot from consumer SATA disks), and invest in a backup solution (cloud or otherwise). Get something you won't have to spend time troubleshooting and configuring - that's time you could be developing. I'd get a raid card and throw in ESXI (free license supports 32gb) or Hyper-V. Most R710s have at least 2x1gb NICs which you can team and get some decent throughput. Stick with a Windows environment for everything until you have more staff to spend time on IT issues. Buy your microsoft licenses from Reddit. (bought mine from: https://www.reddit.com/r/microsoftsoftwareswap/comments/3wxfh5/h_windows_7_8_81_10_windows_server_office_visio/)

 

If you do not go virtual, it's really not that hard to go from physical > virtual for small environment. Vmware has a converter utility that clones and then virtualizes your physical boxes. So don't feel pressured to make the plunge to virtual. It's just nice to be able to take a snapshot and revert in the event of failure. 

There are some nice looking used models out there for the poweredges used. My primary concern with them is that a lot of the models are using 2.5'' sleds so I would either have to buy really expensive SAS disks or go with non NAS optimized drives. I have found an used Super micro SC826E16-R1200LPB with dual E5645 Xeons, 48GB ECC registered RAM, 800W redundant PSU, 12Bay hot swap for about 500 + 90 (shipping) USD$. I am thinking of purchasing this and a RAID card with cache and then picking up some WD Red Pro's to toss in this thing. It will be a bit over budget but it should give me room for a lot of expansion as well good bit of reliability.

 

I will take your suggestion and stick with windows as I agree it will probably be easier to maintain while I am on my own. That is good to know about that utility for virtualization as I think I will implement a little later on to save time on DIY IT work. 

On 3/7/2016 at 3:53 PM, leadeater said:

I would suggest going half way with prebuilt and build your own. I completely agree that the prices server hardware vendors ask can be way to high and often has too limited options for smaller user deployments that require large amounts of data.

 

You can buy a prebuilt new or used that has the basic parts you want e.g. CPU, minimum ram, dual PSU, HBA (or RAID), no HDD and then upgrade the rest yourself. Kingstonr ram has equivalent parts for every brand out there and then you can use WD Reds/Red Pros/Se. The biggest cost savings in build your own vs prebuilt is in the ram and storage cost.

 

I have done this myself. I purchased a new IBM x3500 M4 base model and upgraded it with 128GB ram, Samsung 840/850 Pro SSD's and WD Reds. This same configuration using qualified IBM parts would have easily cost 10-15 times more.

I think a used prebuilt is the plan as I found a nice looking super micro system(mentioned  above). New prebuilts definitely are bit of a pain for my use case as you said, I priced a few out and it was coming far short that than what I would like. I've been researching a lot of potential server hardware configurations and it looks like used is definitely the way to go for the stage that I am in.

 

 

I apologize for the late replies.

[Mikensan]

@trag1c The R710s come with a 3.5" variant so you can use full sized disks. That supermicro is a beastly looking thing, nice find. I'm using a supermicro motherboard from my current NAS, love it. Lot of enterprise features with a prosumer price. 

[potoooooooo]

You can't go wrong with an R710