Server For My School

[TubsAlwaysWins]

So I am graduating from HS this year and I wanted to get something for our schools IT department. I know they are desperately in need of servers (they have one crappy HP server doing 3 different tasks. It's sad). 

Anyways, I want to get them a server and a copy of Windows Server 2012 or 2016. I'm only gonna have around $1000 I think for both. Anyone got any clue what I can get them for that budget? (Buying used ofc idc if it's from eBay or anything). Ideally I'd say 16 cores (2x8 core CPUs) and 48GB of RAM but I know that's probably not possible for my money. So anyone know of some good used servers for the money that fit in or close to the budget with a Windows server license included? 

 

Thanks

also happy late easter

[sazrocks]

1. That's very nice of you and I bet that many more classes of kids will benefit because of this.

2. Make sure you're consulting with the IT dept on what is the best option for them. It would be better to get them a server that does exactly what they need than to surprise them with one that doesn't fit in with their needs.

2a. What services are running on the server right now?

[Enderman]

It is possible that based on school board regulations they are not allowed to use computer hardware given by students.

[suchamoneypit]

19 minutes ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

So I am graduating from HS this year and I wanted to get something for our schools IT department. I know they are desperately in need of servers (they have one crappy HP server doing 3 different tasks. It's sad). 

Anyways, I want to get them a server and a copy of Windows Server 2012 or 2016. I'm only gonna have around $1000 I think for both. Anyone got any clue what I can get them for that budget? (Buying used ofc idc if it's from eBay or anything). Ideally I'd say 16 cores (2x8 core CPUs) and 48GB of RAM but I know that's probably not possible for my money. So anyone know of some good used servers for the money that fit in or close to the budget with a Windows server license included? 

 

Thanks

also happy late easter

Using ebay you can build a 64 core, quad socket opteron server for around $800-1000.

 

Look at my signature. If this is what you want, I can point you to some good ebay sellers for said items. I'd make sure they could use it before you build it though. I've built two opteron servers already and about to finish my third.

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, suchamoneypit said:

Using ebay you can build a 64 core, quad socket opteron server for around $800-1000.

 

Look at my signature. If this is what you want, I can point you to some good ebay sellers for said items.

An old Opteron wouldn't really be that useful to a school now, it won't properly support things like latest versions of ESXi.

 

A straight donation to the school earmarked for IT server and network upgrade would probably be the most useful as they could supplement that with their own money to get something that would best fit and be under warranty.

 

Edit:

Also if the school has ongoing problems security funds for server maintenance the better long term plan is Office 365 of Google Apps, run DHCP on network equipment and aim to have no on site server at all.

[suchamoneypit]

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

An old Opteron wouldn't really be that useful to a school now, it won't properly support things like latest versions of ESXi.

 

A straight donation to the school earmarked for IT server and network upgrade would probably be the most useful as they could supplement that with their own money to get something that would best fit and be under warranty.

What is ESXi , and what is it used for in a school IT?

 

Although old, there is quite a decent amount of performance to be had in an opteron server. My 5820k stock scored something like 900-1000 on cinebench, my opteron server scores something like 2600 on cinebench. This certainly doesn't mean its better in every way, but  for running many services I think all the cores and performance is useful. I say this never having personally worked in an IT environment and not knowing your personal expertise, I just know the hardware.

[Psittac]

https://www.servermonkey.com/ is where I got my server. Excellent site and they can customize it for you.  I would suggest the R710 or the R810

 

dell 2u is where it's at btw

 

edit: an R810 with 4x 8 core xeon's and no ram is $810

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, suchamoneypit said:

What is ESXi , and what is it used for in a school IT?

Virtualization hypervisor used to run VMs, most widely used product for it outside of cloud hosting providers.

 

ESXi has rather strict hardware compatibility so a server that old is unlikely to even boot the latest ESXi OS. It's never a good idea to do an all in one OS, separating out roles to dedicated OS/VM is best practice i.e. never a good idea to share an OS for a Domain Controller and a File Server.

[Psittac]

My R710 with 2x 6 core's get's 1300+ on cinebench

[Hiitchy]

42 minutes ago, Enderman said:

It is possible that based on school board regulations they are not allowed to use computer hardware given by students.

I’d have to agree with this. Plus if the server infrastructure is recycled every few years, it creates issues with the deployment of newer hardware if they own your server, but have to replace everything to their standards.

[unkn0wn1]

just donate money to the IT department.

[Salv8 (sam)]

2 hours ago, Enderman said:

It is possible that based on school board regulations they are not allowed to use computer hardware given by students.

unless it's a donation, schools accept donations of loads of stuff, i wouldn't be surprised to see a server being accepted

if it's free and good and you have a need one, take it and use it

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

unless it's a donation, schools accept donations of loads of stuff, i wouldn't be surprised to see a server being accepted

if it's free and good and you have a need one, take it and use it

It's a better idea to ask first before spending $1000 on something they might not accept.

Schools usually have periodic upgrade plan contracts with large companies like dell or others.

[Salv8 (sam)]

Just now, Enderman said:

It's a better idea to ask first before spending $1000 on something they might not accept.

Schools usually have periodic upgrade plan contracts with large companies like dell or others.

yes, but most schools prefer the spend the money on things like improving education, getting better equipment etc

IT department is low on the budget allocation for a LOAD of schools as most don't see the potential of how computers can befit them

which is sad and does harm the overall education of the child as they aren't taking advantage of this new tech

[TubsAlwaysWins]

8 hours ago, Hiitchy said:

I’d have to agree with this. Plus if the server infrastructure is recycled every few years, it creates issues with the deployment of newer hardware if they own your server, but have to replace everything to their standards.

Trust me they dont have anything for recyciling. They are still using old IBM servers that are 10-15 years old. I work very closely with our IT department. They have literally 0 funding. (My desktop is very similar in price to the budget they had this year). Our school is (id say) about 5-10 years behind and they would take anything they could get their hands on. Half of the network switches are 10 years old and the fans dont work. Most of the desktops run AM Athlon 64 X2’s or Core 2 duos (Of the same time period). 

 

6 hours ago, Enderman said:

It's a better idea to ask first before spending $1000 on something they might not accept.

Schools usually have periodic upgrade plan contracts with large companies like dell or others.

Ill ask if theres anything they would rather have instead but I really dont think they would care. They dont have any update contracts with anyone. Like I said, they are sitting 5-10 years behind technology wise because of how small the school is.

 

9 hours ago, sazrocks said:

1. That's very nice of you and I bet that many more classes of kids will benefit because of this.

2. Make sure you're consulting with the IT dept on what is the best option for them. It would be better to get them a server that does exactly what they need than to surprise them with one that doesn't fit in with their needs.

2a. What services are running on the server right now?

Yeah I know we have daily conversations about it.

Also I can almost guarentee it will fit their needs seeing as they have a cheap HP server with 4 cores and 8 or 12GB of RAM doing 3 different things. The core improvement would be very welcome. 

Im not super sure what they run but I know ther run XenServer on all of their servers. If I had to guess, data storage, DHCP controlling, and probably something to do with our garbage chromebook setup. 

9 hours ago, Enderman said:

It is possible that based on school board regulations they are not allowed to use computer hardware given by students.

No they can. I am the on site admin at my work (Blessed lol) and whenever we have hardware we dont use I offer it to them first. They have never refused anything.

 

9 hours ago, leadeater said:

An old Opteron wouldn't really be that useful to a school now, it won't properly support things like latest versions of ESXi.

 

A straight donation to the school earmarked for IT server and network upgrade would probably be the most useful as they could supplement that with their own money to get something that would best fit and be under warranty.

 

Edit:

Also if the school has ongoing problems security funds for server maintenance the better long term plan is Office 365 of Google Apps, run DHCP on network equipment and aim to have no on site server at all.

Im gonna ask later today what they think would be the most useful, but I doubt its network stuff. The department is super stoked because they got a grant or a donation for some new switches and racks. I know they can’t afford to use Office 365, and they are already so commited to using Googles Services it would be pointless.  

 

 

 

 

Also if I cant say this go ahead and edit this out, but if you guys got anything you wanna get rid of HMU and I can get you in contact with the department. 

[leadeater]

22 minutes ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

I know they can’t afford to use Office 365, and they are already so commited to using Googles Services it would be pointless.  

Either service is fine but Office 365 is free for schools though, no big reason to pick one over the other really though, well not without looking at a bunch of other factors.

[leadeater]

23 minutes ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

Im not super sure what they run but I know ther run XenServer on all of their servers. If I had to guess, data storage, DHCP controlling, and probably something to do with our garbage chromebook setup. 

That's a fairly common setup, XenServer/ESXi/Hyper-V etc so that fact it's one server isn't really a big deal. The specs you mentioned are rather low.

 

What's the school size, roll wise and data storage?

 

For a school with a roll under 500 a single server is a common/standard setup for my old work. Would be something like an HPE ML150/ML350 or Lenovo x3500/TS460/TS550 for tower if school has no rack and for rack HPE DL380 or Lenovo x3550/x3650.

 

For a larger school we would setup two or three servers, DL380 or x3650, with an external storage array like a Lenovo V3700. Add on to that VMware Essential Plus license (education pricing is cheap) to gain full HA features of ESXi/vCenter plus some other nice features. 

 

Used server equipment is cheap but it's not really something I would recommend to store student and school related documents on, and at least in my country there are laws and regulations requiring that type of data be protected and backed up. The bigger issue though is down time if something was to fail, time to fix would be much longer than a lower spec but in warranty server.

[Windows7ge]

10 hours ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

So I am graduating from HS this year and I wanted to get something for our schools IT department. I know they are desperately in need of servers (they have one crappy HP server doing 3 different tasks. It's sad). 

Anyways, I want to get them a server and a copy of Windows Server 2012 or 2016. I'm only gonna have around $1000 I think for both. Anyone got any clue what I can get them for that budget? (Buying used ofc idc if it's from eBay or anything). Ideally I'd say 16 cores (2x8 core CPUs) and 48GB of RAM but I know that's probably not possible for my money. So anyone know of some good used servers for the money that fit in or close to the budget with a Windows server license included? 

 

Thanks

also happy late easter

I know you can pick up E5 2670's pretty cheap right now. ~$200 each. 8C/16T Intel original release price was $1,550 and you could find a used barebones Supermicro for again $200~300 however the price of RAM has shot up a lot in the past year and 1/2. 48GB DDR3 ECC would put you over budget.

 

Then there's the issue Enderman brought up. Unless you have a real connection with someone inside the IT department. Someone with a position of power to make decisions on behalf of the IT department your offer will likely be rejected. If I was generous enough to drop $1,000 on my high school (quite frankly I despised my whole district and still do. Nothing but red-necks, VERY LITTLE cultural diversity so all the country kids did and said whatever they wanted about every other culture and the sc-...I'll just stop, I'm getting off topic) then I'd consult the IT dept before doing anything. As nice as it'd be to surprise them unless you have a backup plan for the server if they reject it due to any number of reasons you're better off not doing it at all.

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Nothing but red-necks, VERY LITTLE cultural diversity so all the country kids did and said whatever they wanted about every other culture and the sc-...I'll just stop, I'm getting off topic

When you go to find a good redneck meme and all of them are SUPER nope lol.

[Windows7ge]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

When you go to find a good redneck meme and all of them are SUPER nope lol.

Yeah the culture as a whole is really...something...I had to deal with it 6th grade - 12th grade. I swear every day I couldn't wait to graduate and gtfo. It wasn't just the students though, the staff was hardly any better and any budget expenses were wasted on useless classroom trinkets when it should have been spent on fixing the 100's of potholes in the parking lot. I like to think I'm generous but giving my highschool a $1,000 server is definitely out of the question. They'd probably sell it and use to money on more trinkets the students barely if ever utilize.

[tikker]

11 hours ago, suchamoneypit said:

What is ESXi , and what is it used for in a school IT?

 

Although old, there is quite a decent amount of performance to be had in an opteron server. My 5820k stock scored something like 900-1000 on cinebench, my opteron server scores something like 2600 on cinebench. This certainly doesn't mean its better in every way, but  for running many services I think all the cores and performance is useful. I say this never having personally worked in an IT environment and not knowing your personal expertise, I just know the hardware.

Sorry to hijack the thread a bit, but might I ask how much power your servers pull (idle/load)?  

 

OP: that's a generous reverse graduation gift.

[Enderman]

3 hours ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

 

No they can. I am the on site admin at my work (Blessed lol) and whenever we have hardware we dont use I offer it to them first. They have never refused anything.

 

Ah ok good.

[suchamoneypit]

3 hours ago, tikker said:

Sorry to hijack the thread a bit, but might I ask how much power your servers pull (idle/load)?  

 

OP: that's a generous reverse graduation gift.

With both the opteron servers in my signature at like 80-100% load each, They pull together 890-900W; so really not that much. 

 

Not sure what they pull idle really, they are never idle. They mine crypto.

[suchamoneypit]

14 hours ago, leadeater said:

Virtualization hypervisor used to run VMs, most widely used product for it outside of cloud hosting providers.

 

ESXi has rather strict hardware compatibility so a server that old is unlikely to even boot the latest ESXi OS. It's never a good idea to do an all in one OS, separating out roles to dedicated OS/VM is best practice i.e. never a good idea to share an OS for a Domain Controller and a File Server.

But why use ESXi?

 

Windows Server supports Hyper-V natively for running VMs, what makes ESXi superior? 

I'm not trying to argue i'm legitimately  curious

[dalekphalm]

17 minutes ago, suchamoneypit said:

But why use ESXi?

 

Windows Server supports Hyper-V natively for running VMs, what makes ESXi superior? 

I'm not trying to argue i'm legitimately  curious

ESXi is essentially the de facto standard for Hypervisors. The UI in my opinion is far superior to that of Hyper-V. They support similar features, but I personally much prefer ESXi.