Suggestion on New Virtualization Hardware

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Puppetfreek

New Member
Nov 17, 2014
22
4
3
Hello,

I'm considering to upgrade (and consolidate) my two Dell C6100 to something more energy efficient and silent (WAF). I'm considering going the DYI route - but please let me know if you have any other recommendations that you can (easily) make silent (enough). I'm thinking of using some cheap 4U (any recommendations?) that I can have a couple of SSDs and a few 3,5" drives, and preferably supports ATX PSU. I'm considering reusing a Norco RCP-4020 that I already have, but don't really use. I have plenty of space in the rack, so number of U are not really of any concern.

Current hardware:
As mentioned above, I have 2 C6100 with 4 nodes each. Each of the nodes have: 2xL5639 with 48GB ram. I don't think I need that amount of capacity to start with as I'm not really utilizing everything today (but that might change in the distant future).

Considerations:
* CPU - Found this E5-2696v3 CPU (Intel CPU Xeon E5-2696 v3 OEM =E5-2699 v3 LGA2011-3 18C X99 Compatible i7-5960X | eBay). Looking at the revision (M0) this indeed seems to the retail (OEM) version of the CPU (List of Intel Xeon microprocessors - Wikipedia). Considering running two of them in pair. Anything special that I need to consider as this is an OEM CPU?
Mobo: Liked Supermicro so far, so something from the X10DR-line. Don't need 10GbE, but considering if I should go with the 24 memory stick version instead so I can upgrade ram later down the road / populate with cheaper sticks.
* Cooler - Noctua NH-U12Dx i4.
* Memory - Not decided yet, but would require around 256GB

This is a homelab, so no redundancy is really required. Is there used enterprise servers out there cheaper, that can be made silent / gutted easily?

Thanks!