New guy intro, and hardware suggestions

[rahimlee54]

Hi all,

I have been lurking here on and off for a few months. I even created an account and forgot about it.

I have been reading and doing some basic computer enthusiast stuff for years on and off and decided over the last year to automate my home with openhab in a RPI. After I learned a little on that I bought a dell optiplex pretty cheaply to run services on and have been playing with that for around a month now. I installed a unifi network and bought a 4 post rack. It's time to add to the stack and move off of the optiplex onto a server and try VM or dockers. Mostly as entertainment and a learning experience. I've been fortunate that I found a good group of people to help me root cause problems and then I've found the answer online for ubuntu server, my first linux experience. Not nearly as frustrating as I had imagined, seems a little daunting to just pick up with no experience, but a little persistence and reading gets you through.

I was looking for some suggestions on a potential first server. It'll run a few services: openhab, unifi controller, and grafana/influxdb ATM. I want to move the optiplex to pfSense duty once those are running. I have been looking and it looks like a Dell R210ii w/ xeon 1240 V2 and 32 GB Ram will do a pretty good job for me and give me enough hardware to try out new things as I learn or try different stuff. So any suggestions on the hardware decision or alternatives are defiantly welcome. I've looked a few options listed here as well and thought about those but can't really decide if I need that much extra server laying around. Hard to know since I have limited experience.

Any input is appreciated.

Thanks
Jared

 

[Klee]

Do what I did.

Build a ProxMox server.

It can do what ever you want to and if your budget is limited as mine you can do what I did and go the used socket 2011 route.

Cheap ram, cheap cpu's, wide range of motherboards.

AMAZING bang for your buck.

 

[pricklypunter]

Welcome to the madhouse @rahimlee54

The r210ii is an excellent choice for running a half dozen or so serious VM's. I have had as many as 14 running on mine all at the same time, mostly just light loads, and it didn't break a sweat. It's quiet in use, unless you are kicking it's rear end, and it's not at all power hungry. Toss in the management cards and you have remote OOB management tools as well. Its a keeper for sure.

Where you will find it falling down though, is in the storage department. There is not much room in there for any serious storage capacity. This can be addressed with an addon card and an external disk shelf of some kind, but keep that in mind if you need lots of disk space for your projects etc.

You can always roll your own version of this of course, using a SuperMicro board like the X9SCM-F with similar CPU etc. This would give you the same punching weight/ compute power and similar running cost, but also give you some extra freedom for expansion, having the additional PCIe slots you would gain. Or, as has been mentioned, jump right into a 2011v1/v2 board and chip(s) right from the beginning. If you were to go dual socket, you could always populate just one set of CPU and RAM slots and then grow into the other, as the need arises. Decisions decisions

 

[rahimlee54]

Do what I did.

Build a ProxMox server.

It can do what ever you want to and if your budget is limited as mine you can do what I did and go the used socket 2011 route.

Cheap ram, cheap cpu's, wide range of motherboards.

AMAZING bang for your buck.

Thanks for the feedback, I was looking at that on reddit as well so I think this may be viable, just need to find the hardware and case . The used 2011 socket route is the way I plan to go for sure.

Welcome to the madhouse @rahimlee54

The r210ii is an excellent choice for running a half dozen or so serious VM's. I have had as many as 14 running on mine all at the same time, mostly just light loads, and it didn't break a sweat. It's quiet in use, unless you are kicking it's rear end, and it's not at all power hungry. Toss in the management cards and you have remote OOB management tools as well. Its a keeper for sure.

Where you will find it falling down though, is in the storage department. There is not much room in there for any serious storage capacity. This can be addressed with an addon card and an external disk shelf of some kind, but keep that in mind if you need lots of disk space for your projects etc.

You can always roll your own version of this of course, using a SuperMicro board like the X9SCM-F with similar CPU etc. This would give you the same punching weight/ compute power and similar running cost, but also give you some extra freedom for expansion, having the additional PCIe slots you would gain. Or, as has been mentioned, jump right into a 2011v1/v2 board and chip(s) right from the beginning. If you were to go dual socket, you could always populate just one set of CPU and RAM slots and then grow into the other, as the need arises. Decisions decisions

I'll see what I can dig up today, I am tired of looking at this point just want to buy something so I can move forward.

Thanks
Jared

 

[rahimlee54]

X10SRM-F
xeon e5 2630v4
64 GB of Ram
Fractal Design Define R5

Kinda thinking about that as a nice starter build to test the waters. Good option?

 

[Spartacus]

The v4 aren't really needed for a home lab, you can pickup a v3 for about 1/3 the cost that is equivalent or better.
Unless you just really need the 2400 speed memory vs 2133 or reduced power, for home builds the v3 is a much better bang for buck.

There are several folks on the forums selling 26XX v3 for really reasonable prices, I was looking at a 2680 v3 for $150 or 2690 v3 for $200 (ran into transmission troubles that the $ had to go towards though).

https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...680v3-e5-2630-v4-e5-2637-v4-e5-2650-v4.25412/

 

[rahimlee54]

The v4 aren't really needed for a home lab, you can pickup a v3 for about 1/3 the cost that is equivalent or better.
Unless you just really need the 2400 speed memory vs 2133 or reduced power, for home builds the v3 is a much better bang for buck.

There are several folks on the forums selling 26XX v3 for really reasonable prices, I was looking at a 2680 v3 for $150 or 2690 v3 for $200 (ran into transmission troubles that the $ had to go towards though).

https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...680v3-e5-2630-v4-e5-2637-v4-e5-2650-v4.25412/

Good catch, I'll definitely take that advice.


I have this sever chassis, with old or no backplanes, can I just but 1 u Supermicro backplanes and use this case?

Thanks

 

[Spartacus]

Its possible but not likely, you can get pretty cheap SM case options depending on the size/slots/drive count you're looking for.