Advice needed for buying old servers

[felmyst]

I need some real physical server hardware for a home lab. It'll run WS2016 + Hyper-V and Storage Spaces Direct, so I need:

• some IPMI-based remote management for SC VMM bare metal deployment (need to be able to mount ISO, power on/off and remote console)
• as much horsepower as possible for as little price as possible
• 5500/5600 and newer Xeons
• preferably 6+ 2.5" drives and 2+ pcie slots
• servers need to be VT-d/VT-x capable
• there should be no vendor-lock issues with options (they must work with any third-party network cards, ram, sas controllers, etc.). if there're — please let me know

Budget is about 300$/server.
Mostly looking at used old-gen "brand" servers as they're cheap, but I've got no experience with tier-1 vendors (Dell, HP, IBM, etc.) so I don't know whether there're any caveats. Can you recommend some models?
I've seen some dirt cheap (~120$) HP Proliant DL160 G6 for example, but heard that DL1XX are awful and must be avoided.

 

[Patrick]

If you can, get E5 V1's. Lower power consumption, more cores/ performance, PCIe 3.0, SATA III, more memory slots mean cheaper RAM and etc. The Xeon 5500 generation also did not have features like AES-NI.

Wait another week or two and a REALLY nice deal on Intel R2308GZ servers should pop into the FS forum. Slightly more than your budget but you may be able to sell some of the parts and come close to $300/ server. You also will have the ability to use some of the inexpensive kalleyomalley Intel NICs, HBAs and etc.

Foreshadowing a bit but I already pre-approved a FS post that should go live in a week or two.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

I need:

• some IPMI-based remote management for SC VMM bare metal deployment (need to be able to mount ISO, power on/off and remote console)
• as much horsepower as possible for as little price as possible
• 5500/5600 and newer Xeons
• preferably 6+ 2.5" drives and 2+ pcie slots
• servers need to be VT-d/VT-x capable
• there should be no vendor-lock issues with options (they must work with any third-party network cards, ram, sas controllers, etc.). if there're — please let me know

The Dell R710 fits that description. There's both 6 * 3.5" and 8 * 2.5" options available. Most come with 5600 series CPUs which have AES-NI. There are a bunch of RAID controllers - the PERC H700 is the newest supported card, and uses a dedicated slot, leaving the PCIe slots open. They're reasonably power-efficient (my R710 w/ 2 * X5680, 40GB, 6 * 15K HDD) normally runs under 200W with a light to medium load. Not all of them have full remote management - the iDRAC 6 Enterprise is an option (look for the 5th NIC port at the back left instead of a black filler plate). But they're $10-ish on eBay.

Newer Dell generations tend to go "You got a license for that, buddy?" if you try to add to the config.

Mostly looking at used old-gen "brand" servers as they're cheap, but I've got no experience with tier-1 vendors (Dell, HP, IBM, etc.) so I don't know whether there're any caveats. Can you recommend some models?

I wouldn't touch HP due to their policy about firmware updates (their policy is "got money?"). I have no direct experience with IBM, but a company I consult for likes them (but then again, they pay big $ for service contracts - no idea how they are off-contract).

 

[Kuz]

If you can, get E5 V1's. Lower power consumption, more cores/ performance, PCIe 3.0, SATA III, more memory slots mean cheaper RAM and etc. The Xeon 5500 generation also did not have features like AES-NI.

Wait another week or two and a REALLY nice deal on Intel R2308GZ servers should pop into the FS forum. Slightly more than your budget but you may be able to sell some of the parts and come close to $300/ server. You also will have the ability to use some of the inexpensive kalleyomalley Intel NICs, HBAs and etc.

Foreshadowing a bit but I already pre-approved a FS post that should go live in a week or two.

wished I had known this a couple weeks ago.... got trigger happy after starting to read these forums an splurged on a ton of old stuff I don't really know how to use on ebay hah

 

[felmyst]

If you can, get E5 V1's. Lower power consumption, more cores/ performance, PCIe 3.0, SATA III, more memory slots mean cheaper RAM and etc. The Xeon 5500 generation also did not have features like AES-NI.

Wait another week or two and a REALLY nice deal on Intel R2308GZ servers should pop into the FS forum. Slightly more than your budget but you may be able to sell some of the parts and come close to $300/ server. You also will have the ability to use some of the inexpensive kalleyomalley Intel NICs, HBAs and etc.

Foreshadowing a bit but I already pre-approved a FS post that should go live in a week or two.

I'm looking mostly at 1U servers because I live in Belarus and shipping 2U systems is extremely expensive for me. Shipping for 1U Dell r610 will cost me about 300-400 $, r710 will be almost 500$/server. Add cost of the server and I'm broke.