Is there an SSD-optimised equivalent of the HP Microserver?

[martinm2]

Hi,

I'm looking at upgrading my homelab and looking at going all-flash for a futureproof converged server, given continued fall in SSD prices and the impending demise of HDD even for mass storage. However, I can't immediately see an obvious option and am wondering if I am missing something.

Context: my current homelab has a single main server with Proxmox, LXC containers and virtualised k8s for what I imagine is a fairly typical mix of file serving, Plex, and running various smart bits around the home. I also spin up ad-hoc experimental workloads so I can get familiar with technology I want to know about for work without bureacracy - largely around large scale data & analytics platforms, so often needs a fair chunk of RAM and relatively speedy storage.

I also have a secondary backup server for replicating key data and to provide some limited capacity to keep the house running if the primary server dies. I have in the past run a Proxmox cluster with an old NUC for quorum. However, it made upgrades unnecessarily fiddly and was overkill, so now I just use znapzend to replicate ZFS filesystems for key data and Proxmox backups for critical VMs/containers.

Servers are in the garage and box room, so don't need to be absolutely silent, but in the past I've tried refurb 12 bay/2u rackmount Xeon E5s and they have been much too audible in adjacent rooms, bulky and power hungry. So I've settled on "enterprise compact edge" hardware/form factor.

Primary server - Supermicro Mini-Tower

• CSE-721TQ-250B compact 4 x 3.5" bay chassis
• X11SDV-8C+-TLN2F embedded Xeon D motherboard
• 128GB ECC RAM (probably went overboard there)
• 2 x SATA SSD Kingston Data Center DC500M in mirrored ZFS pool for boot / critical containers
• 2 x NVMe SSD Crucial P5 1TB (on single available PCIe port via bifurcation) in mirrored ZFS pool for I/O intensive experimental workloads
• 4 x SATA HDD Toshiba N300 8TB striped/mirrored in ZFS pool for mass storage (media and experiments) in hotswap SAS bays

Backup server - HP MicroServer Gen8

• Celeron G1610T
• 16GB ECC RAM
• 1 x SATA SSD Samsung SM863a 240GB for boot / critical containers, attached via PCIe SATA3 expander
• 2 x SATA HDD Toshiba N300 8TB + 2 x HDD WD RED 4TB striped/mirrored in ZFS pool for mass storage, in SATA3/SATA2 bays

The MicroServer is aging (I've had it 8 years), so I'm looking to replace it - hopefully with something that will last a similar amount of time - and demote the Supermicro to secondary.

I'm not terribly familiar with enterprise SSD technology and how it gets used in low end servers, but is the following sensible, and if so does it exist?

• Small mini-tower server chassis similar to the above (possibly slightly larger if need be)
• Quiet-ish operation
• Low-power Xeon (ideally) or at least current i3 (or AMD equivalent)
• Capacity for at least 128 GB of (preferably ECC) RAM
• 6-8 bays for U.2/U.3 drives OR 6-8 m.2 sockets on the motherboard (I don't need hot swap)
  • Alternatively 6-8 2.5" bays for SAS or SATA SSDs - but would be a shame to throttle the bandwidth, and how long will these be available?
• IPMI/IP KVM
• 1 or 2 x 10 gigabit networking, preferably SFP+
• 1 or 2 x 1/2.5 GbE networking
• Maybe an external SFF-8087 port so I can stick my old 3.5" HDDs in a QNAP TL-D400S or similar and make some use of them

Or obviously tell me if I'm thinking about this all wrong.

Thanks

 

[martinm2]

Of course, having posted this I may now have partially answered my own question. It looks like the ML30 Gen10 Plus and the new Gen11 (https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a50007008enw.pdf) hit some points with the Gen10 Plus starting at £800 (before RAM/drives), albeit

• In a larger form factor
• With no U.2/U.3 and only one slow m.2 socket - albeit one of the options suggests SAS now supports up to 24 Gbit/s, which I hadn't realised, and would potentially help if HBAs and drives are reasonable
• Would require ILO Advanced license (~£170), SAS HBA to use more than 4 bays, and a 10 GBit/s network adapter

I'm assuming here it's not possible to do U.3 across a backplane not specifically designed for it?

I'd love to know about other options.

 

[martinm2]

And one option that hits every point - SuperMicro IoT SuperServer SYS-E403-13E-FRN2T. It supports 4 x U.2 internally, with an m.2 slot for boot. and 2 x 10GBE networking built in. Another couple of m.2s could go on a PCIe card, with two (PCIe 5) slots left over.

The downside - it starts at around £2,100 before RAM/drives. Ouch.