How to tell good servers for a given use case from a bad server

[austinkregel]

For a while now I've been messing around with server software and at my last job I had the chance to mess with actual rack mounted servers. I loved the convenience they provided and for our use cases they were perfect (we ran the server as a Proxmox server and it worked great). We would be bringing VMs up and down once or twice a week to test new software for our clients and since I left the job I miss that ability.

I've been eyeing up the Antsle project as a personal at-home solution, but the one I want is far more expensive than what I can afford at the moment. So I'm looking to go for a small 1U or 2U server for this.

I plan on running 4 to 5 always-on VMs (to act as my router/firewall, vpn tunnel, security system, web server, and db server), and on top of that I'll be creating/destroying a new VPN a handful of times a month to test new software (it's easiest from a clean slate).

 

My question mainly stems from my inexperience when it comes to creating servers, and from my desire to not buy another server for a little while. I really hate the words, but I basically want to future proof my use case.

 

I know some basic hardware things I'll need is at least a gigabit ethernet connection, a few terabytes for the VMs, probably an SSD for the boot drive, and probably more than 4 cores on the CPU.

 

I found this beast of a server on amazon (beast in size... lol), but I also have a quote for a server from a company for a server 10x the price of that server with a Intel Xeon E3-1275, and a Supermicro SuperChassis CSE-813MTQ-R400CB.

 

I'm not sure which server would work best, nor do I know how the servers compare to one another other than the new server having a newer gen processor and a few more gigs of ram. I'd really love more insight on this, and would love some help from the kind people here ?

 

If I'm missing any information just let me know, or if I need more information for my use case or something along those lines  

[Mayaa]

Depending on which generation the E3-1275 is from it could be a lot more recent architecture compared to the E5530.

But for your use case it seems like you will be fine with either, at least speed wise. Depends how much you care about power usage and what not.

[austinkregel]

I don't really have any concern with speed other than with the router/firewall aspect of the thing, and I feel like it would be fine with the gigabit card. The E3-1275 is from the Kaby Lake series.