is this config good?

[Ashleyyyy]

i found a great deal on a HP ProLiant ML350 G5... i found one in great shape for €25!!

 

i want to use it for 2 things. as a caching server and a file server. 

i will put 2 dual-core xeon's in it, and 8 gb of ram. 

 

i will likely put a bunch of 500gb laptop hdd's in it, possibly in raid 1. 

 

is that a good configuration?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Do you pay for power? Those are very power hungry systems.

 

Id really just get a old desktop for this, you don't need the cpu power here.

 

 

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you pay for power? Those are very power hungry systems.

 

Id really just get a old desktop for this, you don't need the cpu power here.

 

 

i could use 1 xeon if that makes more sense. i just have a few xeons that work with this server laying around... 

 

i don't have any old desktops that are reliable or can fit the amount of drives i want to use. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

 

i don't have any old desktops that are reliable or can fit the amount of drives i want to use. 

Sas expanders my friend, You can store tons of drives that way.

 

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

i could use 1 xeon if that makes more sense. i just have a few xeons that work with this server laying around... 

 

Do you care about power usage? Removing a cpu won't make it low power, these systems idle at about 200w.

[Ashleyyyy]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you care about power usage? Removing a cpu won't make it low power, these systems idle at about 200w.

not really. i will set it up so it won't be on at night or when i don't need it. it will be on a maximum of 10 hours a day. 

 

8 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Sas expanders my friend, You can store tons of drives that way.

yeah but i'd need to have my main desktop on, which is also a dual xeon machine so that won't solve the power issue

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

yeah but i'd need to have my main desktop on, which is also a dual xeon machine so that won't solve the power issue

Id just get a used desktop, You can get a used buiness desktop for less than 100 that will work fine here and use much less power(it will pay for its self in that power savings even at only 10 hours a day) and would be faster and just work better here.

 

How many drives?

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id just get a used desktop, You can get a used buiness desktop for less than 100 that will work fine here and use much less power(it will pay for its self in that power savings even at only 10 hours a day) and would be faster and just work better here.

i don't really care about the small amount of money i would save. it's only a few euro's at most. i don't want to take the risk of storing all of my important stuff on consumer hardware. the advantage of a server like that is that i can have ecc ram and redundant power supplies. 

 

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How many drives?

8 2.5" laptop drives, each 1tb, in raid 1. so 4 tb usable. 

and maybe 2 1TB 3.5" drives mounted using DIY mounting for the caching server portion of the machine. 

 

forgot to mention that, i will be running 2 virtual machines, 1 will be the file server and 1 will be the caching server. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, firelighter487 said:

i don't really care about the small amount of money i would save. it's only a few euro's at most. i don't want to take the risk of storing all of my important stuff on consumer hardware. the advantage of a server like that is that i can have ecc ram and redundant power supplies. 

The other problem is that stuff is old. Computer hardware does wear out, so it won't be great forever. Consumer hardware will work fine. And thats why you have backups anyways.

 

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

8 2.5" laptop drives, each 1tb, in raid 1. so 4 tb usable. 

and maybe 2 1TB 3.5" drives mounted using DIY mounting for the caching server portion of the machine. 

 

forgot to mention that, i will be running 2 virtual machines, 1 will be the file server and 1 will be the caching server. 

Id probably stay away from vms with 8gb of ram, run fileshareing on the host, use containers or docker for caching.

[Ashleyyyy]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

The other problem is that stuff is old. Computer hardware does wear out, so it won't be great forever. Consumer hardware will work fine. And thats why you have backups anyways.

sure but i don't have a lot of confidence in consumer hardware for stuff like this. just a personal thing. i might be completely wrong but yea...

and just because it's old means nothing. i've had a 2 month old motherboard get audio issues and i own boards that are 8+ years old and work totally fine. 

 

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id probably stay away from vms with 8gb of ram, run fileshareing on the host, use containers or docker for caching.

doesn't docker also use a kind of virtual machine? i was planning on using ubuntu server as the host OS if that matters... 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, firelighter487 said:

doesn't docker also use a kind of virtual machine? i was planning on using ubuntu server as the host OS if that matters... 

docker uses linux containers. It needs a vm if its not on linux.

 

Just now, firelighter487 said:

sure but i don't have a lot of confidence in consumer hardware for stuff like this. just a personal thing. i might be completely wrong but yea...

and just because it's old means nothing. i've had a 2 month old motherboard get audio issues and i own boards that are 8+ years old and work totally fine. 

All hardware will fail, esp if older, so keep good backups and your data is safe.

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

docker uses linux containers. It needs a vm if its not on linux.

oh okay. so ubuntu server and docker will work fine then? 

 

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

All hardware will fail, esp if older, so keep good backups and your data is safe.

yeah i know. i'm still more comfortable using server grade hardware though. because if i'm going to get an old desktop instead of the server it would be the same thing. old. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, firelighter487 said:

oh okay. so ubuntu server and docker will work fine then? 

Yep.

 

What type of caching do you want to do? For most network caching there is a premade docker container you can use.

 

Then just use samba or nfs on the host. 

 

If you got a raid card id use that for raid, otherwise id go btrfs so you can mix drive sizes and easily expand

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What type of caching do you want to do? For most network caching there is a premade docker container you can use.

steam, overwatch updates (so blizzard) and Windows update. 

 

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Then just use samba or nfs on the host. 

can i connect to that on macOS, Windows and Linux? 

 

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If you got a raid card id use that for raid, otherwise id go btrfs so you can mix drive sizes and easily expand

https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c01464093

those are the specs of the server. if you scroll down to storage controller, i assume that means the raid card? i'm not sure what model it is but either of them can do raid 1. 

[Ashleyyyy]

31 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How many drives?

acutally i'm still gonna go with 8 but 250gb. i just saw on that specsheet that's the max for it right? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, firelighter487 said:

steam, overwatch updates (so blizzard) and Windows update. 

Then just use the premade docker containers and then have fun with dns

 

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

can i connect to that on macOS, Windows and Linux? 

Yep, samba for cifs on windows, and nfs for linux and osx. This is what all the other nas boxes use

 

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

tps://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c01464093

those are the specs of the server. if you scroll down to storage controller, i assume that means the raid card? i'm not sure what model it is but either of them can do raid 1. 

What card do you have? Raid 1 is normally 2 drives only. Probably want 5 or 6 or 10 her.e

Just now, firelighter487 said:

acutally i'm still gonna go with 8 but 250gb. i just saw on that specsheet that's the max for it right? 

SHould be able to handle more, probably 2tb max

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What card do you have? Raid 1 is normally 2 drives only. Probably want 5 or 6 or 10 her.e

not sure. i'm gonna get the server tomorrow, i'll know then. i won't buy drives or anything until i know. 

 

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

SHould be able to handle more, probably 2tb max

how do you know that? it's on the spec sheet, for sata drives 8x 250gb...

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

how do you know that? it's on the spec sheet, for sata drives 8x 250gb...

Thats probably the biggest drives made at the time. Most raid cards from that era are 2tb max drives.

 

1 minute ago, firelighter487 said:

not sure. i'm gonna get the server tomorrow, i'll know then. i won't buy drives or anything until i know. 

Gonna say it again, please don't get that, its very old. Your much better off with something newer. Something like a dell t110 or a ml330 g6 would be a much better buy here. THat system is really getting old now and missing features.

[Ashleyyyy]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Thats probably the biggest drives made at the time. Most raid cards from that era are 2tb max drives.

oh okay that makes sense.

 

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Gonna say it again, please don't get that, its very old. Your much better off with something newer. Something like a dell t110 or a ml330 g6 would be a much better buy here. THat system is really getting old now and missing features.

well i was going to get it anyway just because i have a lot of stuff laying around that i could use with it, however;

 

i also own a ProLiant ML350 G6. the specs of that are 2 Xeon E4620's, and 16gb of ram. it also has 2 460W psu's.

it's missing a few things but i got it very cheap. it's not ready for use as a server though. one of the heatsinks is mounted with zip-ties for example. 

i am in the process of getting a proper heatsink and some other missing parts for it, so would it be better for this once i have it complete?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, firelighter487 said:

i am in the process of getting a proper heatsink and some other missing parts for it, so would it be better for this once i have it complete?

Id would use it if you can fix it as its much lower power, hold more ram, has more cpu features(better for vms)

[Ashleyyyy]

11 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id would use it if you can fix it as its much lower power, hold more ram, has more cpu features(better for vms)

not that much lower power though... that G6 when it was working with two X5650's in it would idle in the 150 - 200 watt range i believe. i don't know exactly.