General Server questions

[Lenovus_]

Hi all,

I currently have a apple 2012 Mac mini and I'm using it as a server,but I want to start to set up a personal rack mounted server to store data on but I have no idea how to got about that... any help would be appreciated. I would also like to know if it is possible to run 10gb transfer speeds to a server thats running on a regular home router and how I should connect a server to a network. 

 

Thanks for all you help I know I'm probably asking dumb questions but I'm server illiterate.

[Catsrules]

Well first off, rack mounted servers are basically the same as normal computers. Main differences is they have a different form factor and they are more enterprise grade hardware. (Dual power supplies, hotswapable fans etc. 

I would recommend you take a look at /r/homelabs wiki

They have some very good information there. Good starting point for someone just starting out.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/index

 

 

[Sir Asvald]

Hi and welcome to the forums!

 

Well you can build your own one from scratch using standard consumer grade hardware or server grade. The best option is to buy used servers that companies decommission and sell for fair price. But it depends on what you want, some of these servers might come with 2 CPUs and a lot ram. There are plenty of options. AS for 10gb transfer speeds, it is possible. Linus has done some videos regarding that topic.  Look at Ebay for Dell rack servers. I've got a Dell PE 210 II. They sell for £200-300. Which is reasonable and they very quite, I've got mine in my room.   

[Guest]

Instead of paying more for newer PC hardware and expensive server grade hardware, buying a decommissioned server from another vendor is a viable option of which is cheaper and more affordable.

[NelizMastr]

I agree with @TheBeastPC. Get something like an HP ProLiant DL380 G6 or equivalent. They can be found reasonably cheap these days. Same goes for the rackmount version of the ML350 G6.

They'll take energy efficient L5500 and L5600 Xeons, to keep noise, heat and power draw to a minimum.

[GDRRiley]

9 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

 HP ProLiant DL380 G6 or equivalent.

no I have one and they are a pain in the ASS get a G7 version or go with dell or suppermicro. 

[NelizMastr]

5 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

no I have one and they are a pain in the ASS get a G7 version or go with dell or suppermicro. 

The G7 is virtually identical. The next real change was the G8, which is pretty expensive still.

[GDRRiley]

Just now, NelizMastr said:

The G7 is virtually identical. The next real change was the G8, which is pretty expensive still.

the similar range dells are much easier to work with from what I have heard. 

[NelizMastr]

Just now, GDRRiley said:

the similar range dells are much easier to work with from what I have heard. 

I don’t have any Dell experience, but I’ve heard good thing about the R710. Pretty cheap too.

[jkirkcaldy]

I have a dell R710, it's great, but it can use quite a lot of power. Mine sits at about 250w on average. which works out to about £25-30 per month where I am. (2x L5640, 48GB RAM, 6x 2TB 3.5" SATA drives) alternatively my other server that I built from a collection of random left over parts, sits much lower and uses about £10-15p/m (I7 3770, 14x various 3.5" SATA, 32GB RAM)

 

Buying a used server is definitely easier in some ways, i.e. it's much easier to find compatible parts etc, and can often come with awesome features like the iDRAC management but there are also some pretty compelling arguments for building your own.

 

Like someone else said, building a server is the same as building a normal PC, it's just got a different purpose.

 

You can run 10GB speeds, but realistically it's pretty difficult to hit them constantly. You will need to have fast enough drives in a RAID array on both sides. But this would all be independent of your home router. You can either plug the two computers into each other directly (cheap and not really scalable) or get a switch that is 10G capable (more expensive and expandable.)

 

As with most things though it really depends on your budget. If you are sitting around the £/$200-300 mark you will get a lot more for your money buying used servers from ebay. If you have a bigger budget you may be better building something more power efficient and saving in the long term.

[Lenovus_]

Thank you all for your reply's and help, i know i was offline for months; sorry about that.

[Jay Deah]

Agree with the above. Old servers are perfectly good and are worth pennies (we pay people to dispose of ours!) dell, hp, ibm are all perfectly fine and the key differences between them won’t matter much to normal people just make sure you can get spares easy (hp is probably most popular) as for network, stick with a standard pair or 1gbe nice and team them using default settings and it’ll be more than fine for most stuff. Unlikely you’ll saturate that with normal sas drives in the server. Remember lots of iscsi networks run fine on 1gbe (hell a lot of my F.C. network only run 4gb to the hosts)

[Salacious B Crum]

Or repurpose and old tower and run unRAID mine sits at 45watts and is currently 12TB dockers VM's whatever floats your boat

[HKG]

You could get a Dell R610 for ~$350. That would be dual 6 core CPUs and 16GB RAM. Rack mounted servers are just another form factor. If you wanted to, you could put consumer grade hardware in a rack mounted case and use it as a normal computer (might have to drill holes for a consumer motherboard and you should not do this as it is pointless).