Good day,
I am new to the forum. As I have, during the past, found many useful hints in this forum, I decided I want to discuss my new server build here.
I have so far used, for my home network storage, VPN, and so on, an old HPE server. I don't even remember the exact product number. But it is too dated now and also has no longer enough power to run all my Proxmox stuff, so I decided I want to build something new, which will again last for the next couple years to come.
In my work place, we use a lot of Supermicro devices, and therefore, I decided I will use one for my own server as well. Also I have found here and also in the TrueNas/FreeNas community that lots of people do this. So it seems legit for me. I have currently thought about the following two options:
a) Supermicro X11SPA-T board and Xeon Silver 4210R processor. The cool thing about this board is that it has already 4 slots for M.2 SSDs onboard, 12 slots for RAM and many PCIe slots. It is a workstation board, though, and not a server board. Not sure how much this matters. But for instance it includes an audio codec, which will be useless.
b) for a very similar price, I could get an X12SPL-F board and a Xeon Silver 4310 processor. This is a "true" server board, but has only one M.2 slot. On the other hand, I will probably use hard disks for the storage, and let only the OS run from M.2, so this is probably not a criterion.
As I can get used 10GbE NICs and SFP+ modules from my employer (we are changing to 25GbE and therefore throwing out some "older" equipment), I will anyways not use the onboard 1GB ports on both main boards, but instead install a 10GbE NIC with SFP+. Further, I will start with both boards with approx. 64GB RAM, and later upgrade to 128 if needed.
Use case will be File Server, Proxmox VMs (Windows as well), VPN Server to access the home network from externally, some Plex, and general homelab use. Will use ZFS of course. What do you think, which of the two is the nicer one? the X12SPL seems to be a bit newer, but otherwise, they seem to me pretty much equal from the performance point of view, it is just that the workstation board X11SPA has more M.2 slots, which could be nice (on the other hand, more M.2 slots can be added to the X12SPL with a PCIe to M.2 card).
I will attach 8 hard disks for the beginning, but I have already included a HBA for later expansion
Any better ideas? I believe both variants could make a nice home lab server.
I am new to the forum. As I have, during the past, found many useful hints in this forum, I decided I want to discuss my new server build here.
I have so far used, for my home network storage, VPN, and so on, an old HPE server. I don't even remember the exact product number. But it is too dated now and also has no longer enough power to run all my Proxmox stuff, so I decided I want to build something new, which will again last for the next couple years to come.
In my work place, we use a lot of Supermicro devices, and therefore, I decided I will use one for my own server as well. Also I have found here and also in the TrueNas/FreeNas community that lots of people do this. So it seems legit for me. I have currently thought about the following two options:
a) Supermicro X11SPA-T board and Xeon Silver 4210R processor. The cool thing about this board is that it has already 4 slots for M.2 SSDs onboard, 12 slots for RAM and many PCIe slots. It is a workstation board, though, and not a server board. Not sure how much this matters. But for instance it includes an audio codec, which will be useless.
b) for a very similar price, I could get an X12SPL-F board and a Xeon Silver 4310 processor. This is a "true" server board, but has only one M.2 slot. On the other hand, I will probably use hard disks for the storage, and let only the OS run from M.2, so this is probably not a criterion.
As I can get used 10GbE NICs and SFP+ modules from my employer (we are changing to 25GbE and therefore throwing out some "older" equipment), I will anyways not use the onboard 1GB ports on both main boards, but instead install a 10GbE NIC with SFP+. Further, I will start with both boards with approx. 64GB RAM, and later upgrade to 128 if needed.
Use case will be File Server, Proxmox VMs (Windows as well), VPN Server to access the home network from externally, some Plex, and general homelab use. Will use ZFS of course. What do you think, which of the two is the nicer one? the X12SPL seems to be a bit newer, but otherwise, they seem to me pretty much equal from the performance point of view, it is just that the workstation board X11SPA has more M.2 slots, which could be nice (on the other hand, more M.2 slots can be added to the X12SPL with a PCIe to M.2 card).
I will attach 8 hard disks for the beginning, but I have already included a HBA for later expansion
Any better ideas? I believe both variants could make a nice home lab server.