Dirt cheap decomissioned servers? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2023, 10:09:00 pm
content: Looking for a server, but the landscape out there is pretty vast and there are a lot of acronyms I don't know anymoreWhat is the best used I can get for eBay scale money? I can modify the server for most any need, so the most solid basic platform is primary, so what should we grab before Dave reviews one?I plan to install Linux, which shouldn't matter but is germane.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 03:30:55 am
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 27, 2023, 10:09:00 pmThese days, it looks like one of your best bets is to go for a X99 platform with one (or several if you can find a multi-CPU one) Xeon E5 v4 (Broadwell EP). DDR4 ECC is surprisingly "cheap" at the moment, so you can get comfy amounts of RAM for not too much.Just a suggestion, there are probably alternatives.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 03:37:43 am
content: What are your actual requirements?These days especially, purchase price savings on old grunty machines can often be quickly eaten up by electricity usage compared to newer hardware.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 06:41:46 am
content: As already has been suggested, what are you looking to do with it?What concerns me is you state "there are a lot of acronyms I don't know anymore". I'm not exactly sure what terminology you're referring to, but don't think for a moment that enterprise servers (particularly brands like HP, Dell or IBM/Lenovo) are just "big computers". Whilst, fundamentally, yes they are, they often come with quirks and caveats that you won't know about unless you are either familiar with the brand, or have done enough homework to satisfy yourself that a particular make/model will work for your use-case.One example might be that some older servers don't support booting from PCIe cards, you must use a SATA/SAS drive, USB or SD card.Another might be that you are locked to using specific OEM hardware in some cases, or that it doesn't have the number of IO ports (like SAS) that you expect inside.

author: shapirus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 11:01:52 am
content: Yeah, these days servers don't necessarily need to be big and noisy.As an example, here's a true server which is used as a data acquisition system to monitor mains voltage and waveform quality 24/7. The actual computer is smaller than the ADC board it's receiving data from:

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 12:56:13 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on February 28, 2023, 03:30:55 amThats a bit too basic, thats just a regular PC motherboard. I want the full capabilities of a server.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 12:59:29 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLCYou might want to enlighten us as to what you consider "full capabilities of a server" then, because it's a pretty broad term and none of us are mind readers.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 01:00:52 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on February 28, 2023, 03:37:43 amWould year build be a better reference? Maybe 2016 onwards? That would have the latest connectivity, and be in that decommission window, even past it actually. As noted, I can modify, but a solid basic platform is primary, so I suppose a solid pair of processors is a must have, I can find disks and memory. RAID management, so a RAID card, but I can buy that too.Generally when one of these comes with everything in it already, its the best deal.Quote from: BradC on February 28, 2023, 12:59:29 pmA server provides services to other computers in the network. So this sets it apart from the needs of a typical desktop mostly by throughput. A desktop typically handles the input of a single user, while the server tends to handle many users at once.So, because I'm not special, I want a server to do the same thing as it does in a data center, but just in my house.This established, the entire world of IT has put together the basics... disk arrays, multi cores, multiple networking inputs, SAN inputs as in a broad sense the capabilities of a server. Perhaps the word "full" caused consternation, but it doesn't have to be full, just good value for typical server capabilities.

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 01:08:29 pm
content: You still haven't stated your intended use. Is this for company or home use? For home use any desktop PC is better than a full blown rack server. A rack server needs a dedicated space, they are very noisy and draws a lot more power than a small PC. You can run a rack server at home, but I recommend cheap electricity and a separate room or building (e.g. a garage).

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 01:11:27 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on February 28, 2023, 06:41:46 amBuy a kind of flexibility I find useful.Quote from: Halcyon on February 28, 2023, 06:41:46 amI am mostly referring to changes that require wholesale hardware updates. A basic example would be moving off of 32 bit back when, remember when you had to consider what would work?In terms of quirks, all of them will have them to a degree, but with a lack of deep knowledge, I am looking to the community for some guidance on what to look for.One example might be that some older servers don't support booting from PCIe cards, you must use a SATA/SAS drive, USB or SD card.Another might be that you are locked to using specific OEM hardware in some cases, or that it doesn't have the number of IO ports (like SAS) that you expect inside.

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 01:13:15 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 01:00:52 pmI would definitely not put a rack server in my home, unless it's in a garage where I don't have to listen to the horrible noise.Any desktop PC with a good CPU will provide the same functionality of a server. SAN input? The only thing you need is 1 GBit Ethernet, which exists in every PC. RAID is not needed nowadays with today's extremely fast NVMe SSD disks and cheap SATA SSD storage.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 01:17:07 pm
content: Quote from: JohanH on February 28, 2023, 01:08:29 pmMy house has a sealed off concrete zombie safe house which is now houses my server room. I have all the space and noise insulation necessary, and power here is not a problem either.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 01:21:27 pm
content: Quote from: JohanH on February 28, 2023, 01:13:15 pmA SAN is going to use a cable like this, typically. A network cable is how a NAS usually gets to the network, but a SAN needs a controller.

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 01:31:52 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 01:17:07 pmWell then you can go ahead and buy anything you need. I'm not sure this forum will give the best recommendations. In the server end of things, they are so specific to your needs. Is it for file storage or virtual servers etc.Keep in mind servers are made and built for company budgets. For instance, in our company disks are popping all the time and usually warranty takes care of it. Servers are in the range of $10,000 to $30,000 and they are renewed every few years. So, there are definitely used gear out there, but I would never care for dragging these beasts into my house myself, without having dedicated personnel taking care of them. It's just a completely different scale than what I need at home (and my house has many PCs and fiber Internet etc.).

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 01:33:09 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 01:21:27 pmYes, I know. But completely overkill for home use, unless we are talking racks of disks.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 01:48:25 pm
content: Quote from: JohanH on February 28, 2023, 01:33:09 pmHalf the stuff we do is overkill. Servers are actually not a bad way to go, long term. If you have ever owned one they're more temperamental to setup, but they hardly break. If you work in a data center you see the scale, and so failures are more common. But in home use, a good server should hardly ever fail because the parts inside are better.The exception is the thrown together stuff from ebay with mass warehouses of parts... thats more a lottery.

author: shapirus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 01:53:01 pm
content: You're looking for nobody knows what to perform nobody knows which tasks.Until you define what you are trying to achieve, at least approximately, you will not be able to find anything, not to mention that nobody will be able to help you.From the information that we have so far, a computer with a storage interface is what you are looking for. It can be purchased with money both offline and online, including eBay.

author: M0HZH
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 02:54:33 pm
content: Nowadays, "server" is a veeery broad term. Almost everything is virtualized: small services run in containers, medium sized services run in virtual machines, massive services run on clusters. Hardware is not very relevant and can be added if necessary.For home needs, the focus is on storage: backups, sharing, streaming media locally. None of these are too demanding and low-power NAS units are more than enough. I've been very happy with Synology units, but I'd recommend the Plus range for anything that's not absolutely basic. Good enough for even small & medium business needs.If you're more technical, you might want to look up "home lab": people setting up a small datacenter-like configurations at home, to learn / experiment or even use for productivity. This sounds more like what you're looking for. The ideal starting point nowadays for a home lab is one of the Tiny Mini Micro (also known as "1 liter PCs") units from HP / Dell / Lenovo (more detailshere). They pack massive performance / watt, they are really cheap and plenty on eBay, upgradeable, take very small space and they are really quiet (especially compared to a typical datacenter rackable "server"). Installing a free software like Proxmox will allow you to create virtual machines or merge multiple physical units under a single virtual server. For example, a typical unit I use in my home lab is Core i7 (4C8T), 16GB RAM, dual SSDs, costs about £100 and uses 11W of power at idle and about 40W at peak load; for processing needs, this is more than most people need at home.If you're doing something exotic (like 4k video editing over the network, etc) let us know, there are solutions for that as well. But cheap decomissioned servers rarely make sense at home, they're too big, noisy and power-hungry for that.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 04:21:33 pm
content: Quote from: shapirus on February 28, 2023, 01:53:01 pmThen don't respond if its too amorphous for you. You seem to have an ax to grind, find another stone.Quote from: M0HZH on February 28, 2023, 02:54:33 pmPrecisely, so you defined my need. A modern definition of a "server" includes virtualization, SAN management, etc, and needs hardware to run on. Its not "very relevant" until you need to boot a virtual machine, then I would like you to consider what not very relevant hardware you might need to acquire to manage such tasks as you describe.I dont want Synology for the reasons already described.What you are describing is not what I am looking for.What I am looking for is what I described:A decommissioned server built 2016 or after that can run linux.What I keep getting:Dude you just need an X47 modulator with a rasberry and a lenovo disk flipperdoWhat I reiterate:No fellas, I want the one with the really loud ass fans that is heavy as fuck and doesn't belong in a house

author: BrokenYugo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 04:34:10 pm
content: I've more or less set DDR4 as my cutoff for anything, if it isn't at least that fresh it's too old to bother with.That said, you seem to know what you want, so go buy it, anything rack mounted oughta do.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 04:43:35 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 04:21:33 pmIf you have already irreversibly wasted two minutes of my life, I might as well spend the extra 10 seconds to respond that you are completely nutsIf you need a server for the sake of a server, just buy whatever you see that tickles your fancy.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 04:46:53 pm
content: Quote from: BrokenYugo on February 28, 2023, 04:34:10 pmThat's the problem, I know what I want, but I don't know what to buy. Its a broad landscape, and the youtube surprised face guy pitching why this old xyz doesn't spark a lot of confidence.I've pieced together that most of the gen 9 and above HP stuff is well regarded. Dell seems to be more well regarded than HP. And then there are a plethora of other options I don't understand fully yet.Perhaps the forum doesn't have a lot of network folks.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 04:54:42 pm
content: Case in point. Who is suggesting to these content creators to make these silly faces?

author: coromonadalix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 05:44:38 pm
content: just grab a std pc mainboard with many sata connector as you can find or buy an multi sata port cardand for the os you can snatch an windows server os ...even an win10 can serve you fine with good configs, drive shares etc ...if you want to pay for nothing suit your self lolll i cant bear the fans noise in theses servers, want to smash themhad Hp and dell servers, they found out how fast i could throw them out ....Found a mini atx board, added a cheap china 16 ports hot swappable sata card and voila .... right now i have 11 drives in it lollSure i don't raid them, i simply use the "smart" status of the drives, and swap them / clone them if they get to 60-70% ...

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 06:25:03 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 01:11:27 pmThis is gibberish. It does not answer the question of what you are wanting to do with it and what capabilities you need. A server is a computer, nothing more. Most of the special features offered by "real" servers are based on form factor, redundancy and serviceability. They have things like hot swappable redundant power supplies, ECC RAM, redundant fans, etc.If you just want to have a cool rackmount machine then pick up anything you think looks cool. Hopefully you have cheap electricity and somewhere to put it where you won't have to listen to the screaming fans.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 06:32:21 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 04:21:33 pmThen why are you asking us? You seem to know what you want, "A decommissioned server built 2016 or after that can run linux" covers pretty much any server built since 2016. Dell, HP, whatever, they're all similar, just pick a CPU that was available during the era you're interested in and search ebay or e-waste recycling centers. We can't give you any more detailed advice than that if you don't have a specific need.

author: Microdoser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 07:00:39 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 04:21:33 pmThen your answer is here : Go on eBay, look for servers, and buy the one with the really loud ass fans that is heavy as fuck and doesn't belong in a house.People here seem to have misunderstood what you are wanting and are trying to find you a machine that will fit your use case, when you have no use case and what you really want is the one with the really loud ass fans that is heavy as fuck and doesn't belong in a house. They keep asking you what you want to do with it and as far as I can tell, you want it to be heavy as fuck, make a lot of noise, use a lot of power, and have no other fixed uses.EDIT : And of course, from the title, be dirt cheap.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 07:05:19 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on February 28, 2023, 06:32:21 pmYou keep answering your own questions. It does cover a lot of servers built since 2016, doesn't it? Which means that's a lot of ground to cover for 1 person not in that day to day world, isn't it?Which is why I am "asking us." When you are overwhelmed with a body of choice, some like me tend to ask others...And then we get to that funny "we" people use on forums. "We can't help you" says speak for everyone guy.For those you are not speaking for: "we" have plenty of threads on this forum akin to "Help me pick a new multimeter" - I'm struggling to understand how this is substantially different. You're asking me to believe there is nobody here with substantive computer knowledge. What I am also encountering is a certain myopic nature of the posters in this thread to imagine someone out there doing something a little different than they may choose to... and rather than shrug shoulders, there is this consternation afoot. Ooooh... the electricity says a forum dedicated to it's exploitation.2/3 of the thread is unhelpful bullshit. I want a server, help me find one is the gist. Want to help, hey new best friend! Dont? Plenty of things to do with your life.

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 07:14:59 pm
content: If we knew where to find them, somebody would have answered already. Most servers are first run through their warranty period. Then they are either sold or moved to a secondary stage with "old" servers where you run non-critical stuff like backup services, cheap storage etc. until they pretty much die. At that point they are already quite old. Ebay might be your best bet. I bought once an old IBM server on Ebay. Didn't use it much because it was very loud and finally scrapped it. It was a waste of money, but at least it satisfied my curiosity.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 07:21:41 pm
content: Quote from: JohanH on February 28, 2023, 07:14:59 pmI have a similar story, also with an IBM server, but a better result. I used it to learn programming against an environment that manages threading completely differently, it was very helpful.Otherwise, I disagree. What I am looking for is available, I was hoping a few folks here knew the lay of the land the way folks here know multimeters et al. At this stage in the thread, I had hoped to see people chime in with viable suggestions rather than bullshit finger wagging about electricity usage.

author: shapirus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 07:42:44 pm
content: Quote from: JohanH on February 28, 2023, 07:14:59 pmthere are two kinds of people: those who don't yet consider backup services critical and those who already do.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 07:47:45 pm
content: Here:https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=dell+rackmount+server&_sacat=0When you don't have a specific use case, nobody can help you with any specifics. A server is a server is a server, Dell, HP, IBM, etc, it doesn't matter. They're all big, they're all noisy, they're all heavy, they all have loud fans, they all use a lot of electricity, they're all well made, they can all run Linux, nothing in your requirements narrows it down. Search ebay, sort by price with shipping, or search locally, or hang out at e-waste centers, scan craigslist, buy the one you can find that you think looks coolest, they're all similar. Nobody can suggest a specific model and configuration when you haven't given any constraints dependent on the model or configuration. The one that makes the most sense to buy is probably going to be the one you can drive over and pick up so you don't have to deal with shipping a 60 pound beast. If you still can't make a decision, flip a coin, roll some dice, throw a dart at a list of available options, or close your eyes and grab one, it doesn't matter.If you asked people here to help you pick a multimeter, the first thing they're going to ask you is what do you need to use it for? What features matter to you? What is your budget? In this case you've essentially said "I want a multimeter that has probes and a display, and a big knob or some buttons and stuff, and measures things" and the answer to that is go buy one then, it doesn't matter which one, that description is vague enough that it covers all multimeters, so just go look at what's available and pick one that you can afford or that looks the most like the image of "a multimeter" that you have in your head.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 08:04:31 pm
content: The reason you get asked what your actual use case is, is because the answer to that is required before one can make any kind of sensible suggestions.(I do suspect mapleLC won't even read this post fully, because it's too long, and doesn't answer their question. I guess this, too, will be classified as "unhelpful bullshit".)For example, a single-purpose server, for example a database server in a rack, can definitely benefit from good hardware IPMI support, preferably via a dedicated ethernet (RJ45) port.A server that hosts virtual machines, say one or more Apache/Nginx instances for web stuff, doesn't really need IPMI, as the host OS is basically your management interface. In most cases, you'll run very tightly managed OS, typically Linux, on the host, with focus on security (paranoia is good) and userspace tools basically centered around container management.A storage server (NAS) is a completely different beast, closer to a database, except that access to the storage server should be physically limited. (Compare to a database, which typically servers requests from other hosts in the same site.)An edge or frontend server is one that bridges the physically secure site network and external networks, for example in computing clusters. They vary from load balancers (which tend to be more like appliances, closer to say routers than servers, nowadays, although the ones in hardware-secure sites can include TLS encryption and thus reduce the server load significantly using dedicated encryption hardware – the physical network between the balancer and the servers then having plain-text data streams, and thus needs to be physically secured) to openvpn and similar services, which security-wise bridges various domains, and whose correct/secure configuration requires some expertise and experience.DNS servers don't need much storage, but they need to be fast and secure, because they can be hit quite hard. Denial-of-service attacks and various cache poisoning attacks are common; and if your DNS is taken down, you're hosed. If you only have a few servers, it makes sense to offsource DNS to a company specialized in DNS management, but then (social) hijacking countermeasures must be carefully designed and observed to avoid difficulties. Forgetting to renew a domain is a particularly common failure that can cost a company a lot.Email servers are an art on their own. For one, you definitely need a fixed IP address, and be prepared to deal with large email service providers like Google and Microsoft. You need both incoming security, as well as outgoing security to avoid getting blacklisted as a spammer. The email service needs to be tightly coupled to proper DNS service, for both reliability and verifiability. Spam filters, DOS and bot attacks, are commonplace, so surprisingly you'll want quite a bit of memory bandwidth and processor power – not the service itself, but for the filtering capabilities.Computational cluster nodes are a completely separate beast. In many ways they behave exactly like servers – even down to running suitable queue software as the "server" – but their type and resources depends entirely on what one wants to compute with them. Quantum chemistry requires nodes with lots and lots of RAM and GPGPU-type processing power; classical biophysics or materials physics with millions of atoms parallelizes well to separate nodes (machines) with modest memory needs, and just require as much double-precision floating-power arithmetic power as is available.Then there are IOT servers. You have the ones that handle local area IOT things, and provide typically a web-based interface accessible both locally and usually via internet (secured by usernames and passwords, using http + TLS, aka HTTPS), that don't require much resources at all. A small Linux SBC is usually plenty, although I'd pick one with at least 4 GB of RAM. Plain Debian/Devuan, Apache or Nginx, OpenSSH, fail2ban, and lots of Linux configuration and integration effort will get you there. Then you have the ones that handle remote IOT thingies, and interface to users' phones and so on. These have no local network, and are pure internet ("cloud") beasts. You could consider them like normal web servers, but the fact that the traffic is usually very short streams (as opposed to transferring multi-megabyte files), makes the hardware requirements a bit odd. They're often virtualized with a load balancer in front, and with a separate database server (for "customer" data), so that they can be scaled easily to cater to the needs.In short, there is no "server". There is a class of machines often called "servers", which spans a wider range of hardware than ordinary desktop computers do.If you don't know what you want, then go for "dirt cheap", and find out what is available for "dirt cheap". If you have options, then look up their manufacturers sales' pages, to see what they think they are best used for. If you are left with more than one option, list them here and we can tell you more.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 08:14:41 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 12:56:13 pmYou didn't state your requirements, so how would we know. But you said dirt cheap, so that gave a hint?But it's definitely not a basic platform. Many servers have been based on this platform a few years ago.With Xeon processors of this generation, they support up to 1.5TB of DDR4 ECC RAM, up to 22 cores/processor, and you can find dual-CPU motherboards for reasonable prices.A dual Xeon E5 2699v4 or something like that will give you 44 cores/88 threads and will outperfom even a Threadripper except for the top of the line at nearly $8000 each.All this with potentially a gigantic amount of RAM.Tell us this is too basic.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 08:52:11 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on February 28, 2023, 08:14:41 pmAMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5995WX (64-core Zen3, 280W TDP) costs about 7500 € here, and compatible desktop-type (single processor, 8 DIMM slots) motherboards 900-1400 €. 256 Gt (8×32 Gt) of DDR4 3200MHz adds about 1200 €. Say, 10-11k€ for a non-rack version, 10-15k for a rack version.This is not a "server". It is a "server-class" or "server-type" machine suitable for specific tasks, and is only cost-effective for some.I'm not 100% certain about the memory bandwidth for generic virtualization server (running a number of virtualized client OS images for server-type tasks), and personally would only consider one for dedicated simulations requiring double-precision floating-point arithmetic with very large datasets; especially with 2/4/8 PCIe-based SSDs in sw-RAID0 configuration for storage.Dalton,VASP,LAMMPSandGromacsusers with larger molecules and systems to simulate would love one, although many would still ask for CUDA (maybe a pair of Nvidia Hopper H100 cards, at about 35-40k€ apiece).That said, if I got one (and a soundproofed cabinet to put it in, and to exchange the 300W - 1kW thermal output without creating a sauna), I'd definitely continue developing materials physics simulator core tech for sure. (I'm leaving this here just in case someone rich ever decides to fund such development. There hasn't been any real software-side advancements in the last twenty years, so such development might actually make a difference in the energy use and emissions output compared to simulations run. My own focus was allowing simultaenous communication and computation, so that comms latencies would not delay the computation, as well as efficient data structures optimized for cache locality and SIMD.)

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 09:25:36 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 28, 2023, 08:04:31 pmQuote from: james_s on February 28, 2023, 07:47:45 pmYou guys dance the same steps yet sing different songs.In both cases, it's simple. You want a multimeter to do measuring shit and a server to do server shit. By simplifying the use case, you keep turning me into the intentional vagueness asshole. It's not, my requirements are extremely direct. The responses are wispy.So like I want a fast car. What kind? Late model, 2016 on. What are you going to do? Shit you do with fast cars. Ya but do you need handling, I mean, like track? Ya, maybe, sure. Ok, but power? Ya, lots, loud, LOUD. But do you have a gorillion rubles? No, no. I need something maintainable, I'm not stupid. So you understand you can do all this with a nitro kit and a 1993 Honda Civic? Ya. I want a good fast car though. But the gas? I can pay.Asks question...dude 1: AMG merc.dude 2: M1 and M2s can be had, does size matter?dude 3: Get a GTR.^ This is what I was expecting. You guys turned into a bunch of weenies on me. A dude wants to buy a cool server and oh god the electric bills. WTF.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 09:27:30 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on February 28, 2023, 08:14:41 pmThank you. This is the kind if insight I am missing. This is the kind of server that has that really snappy feeling, everything is very instant. Its one of the pleasures of working directly on a server, how fast it is.I am going to research this a bit, thank you for straitening me out on it

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 09:41:05 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 09:25:36 pmNo dude, you're being vague, you just don't get it, if you ask for a vehicle again people are going to want to know what you need it for. Is it any use if one guy tells you to get a M2, another tells you to get a GTR, one suggests a Prius, another suggests an F150 pickup, someone suggests a Civic, what use is any of that advice? Those are all good choices, depending on your needs. If your only criteria is "a vehicle" and "cheap" then I'm just going to say go look at the listings and sort by price.Servers are not like cars, they're not sold based on style, there are not a lot of unique features, they're not entertainment devices, they're just computers, and if you bothered to read the responses I suggested Dell and posted an ebay link, is that not good enough? If you want it narrowed down further then tell us what features are important to you. It's very likely that nobody here has an attachment to any particular model, it just doesn't matter, they're all the same.Anyway, welcome to my ignore list, I won't burden you any further with my attempts to help. It's clearly a waste of time, it's starting to feel like you're just trolling.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 09:42:29 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 09:27:30 pmYou are so totally clueless, I don't think you have ever worked with any kind of server. Everything is very instant? The HP servers we had at a former job took 10 minutes just to POST and boot.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 09:47:28 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 28, 2023, 08:52:11 pmWhat you are looking for does not sound that out of reach. In 5 or 6 years that generation becomes affordable at the hobbyist level.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 09:48:24 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on February 28, 2023, 09:42:29 pmAnd I'm the one trolling...

author: shapirus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 10:02:39 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on February 28, 2023, 09:42:29 pmI feel your pain indeed.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 10:17:25 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 09:25:36 pmOnce more to the ignore list, ahoy!Having been paid to build rack servers and clusters, install them, manage and administer them for years, and even to create a dedicated automagic Linux MD simulation USB distro/stick to evaluate the computational capabilities of a compute cluster node offerings by vendors like HP, Dell, et. al. for an actual university computing cluster purchase, I do believe I could have provided some interesting information and at least anecdotal experience to mapleLC. Pity they consider anyone who knows more than themselves a "weenie".I bet USD $5 mapleLC didn't bother to even read my reply #32 before labeling me as a "weenie". Any takers? Ignore list members don't qualify, obviously.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 10:23:19 pm
content: The thing that becomes apparent to anyone that actually works with these things is on the surface you can't really tell whether you're connected to a Raspberry Pi or the latest 16 core Xeon with 64GB of RAM. Almost always to interact with the system you're SSH'd into a command line terminal, these days usually into a virtual machine running in on whatever hardware happens to be hosting it, many times the physical hardware is not even on premise and you don't know or care where or what it is. Servers are computers like any other, they are typically representative of the top of the line at the time they are made, but once they are a few years old they are nothing special anymore. My current laptop is more powerful than the biggest baddest servers we had at the last job where I had any direct contact with servers, and a Raspberry Pi is more powerful than the high end servers we had when I started my career. I still have a few old Sun Netra sparc servers kicking around here that are roughly equivalent to the first generation RPi, except they are larger and use at least 10 times as much power. In actual use you can't tell the difference, linux is linux is linux. The hardware is essentially irrelevant. I keep the old Sun sparc boxes around because I have a nostalgic soft spot for them but I haven't fired them up in years, they just don't do anything that my more modern hardware can't do better. I used to have some IBM and HP 2U xeon servers but I gave them away years ago, again there wasn't anything they could do that smaller, quieter computers I had couldn't.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 10:33:17 pm
content: OP:Do you mean, something like this:https://www.ebay.com/itm/115524204908?epid=1554622390&hash=item1ae5c7796c:g:vLMAAOSwoQZjH3mVOr like this:https://www.ebay.com/itm/115598527180?hash=item1aea358acc:g:4-wAAOSwZgFjbBoQOr this:https://www.ebay.com/itm/115708585370?epid=1154505126&hash=item1af0c4e59a:g:XNUAAOSwYHVj~Oax

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 10:57:20 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on February 28, 2023, 09:42:29 pmYup."Snappy"? Servers have SLOOOW CPUs .. they just have lots of cores. And/or lots of disk or RAM.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 10:58:42 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 09:48:24 pmIndeed so.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 11:13:57 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 12:56:13 pmWhat full capabilities? What, exactly, does a serverdothat you need?What do you want people to suggest one machine over anotherfor? Differences between hardware RAID controllers? How good the BMC interface is? POST time? Whether they're more readily available with 2.5" bays or 3.5" bays? Types of PCIe riser for expansion options?What are you actually looking to do beyond execute unspecified code?

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2023, 11:17:13 pm
content: Quote from: MK14 on February 28, 2023, 10:33:17 pmThese 2, yes. They are in the ball park. I was looking at these Fujitsu's but they seem expensive in comparison.https://www.ebay.com/itm/185713190070This Cisco also...https://www.ebay.com/itm/234727734117Quote from: MK14 on February 28, 2023, 10:33:17 pmI can get what I need for less.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 12:11:18 am
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 11:17:13 pmThe potential advantages of going for a main-stream, popular/common server type/make, such as Dell or HP. Is you are more likely to find software/drivers, replacement/upgrade parts (some of which is custom and can't come from other computers), google-able/youtube help, and more likely to find help when/if asking on the appropriate forums, if necessary.Also bios upgrades (if needed), are more likely to be available, although I think HP get funny and may insist on a service subscription or some nonsense like that. Which may make you avoid them.There can be, really cheap (apparently identically spec'ed), less common server makes. But they can end up biting you on the nose, in various ways. Such as that their spare parts are harder to get, especially quickly, information can be harder to come by and drivers (software) support, can be much more sketchy.Servers can be much, much more fussy and fiddly than normal PCs. Things which would have readily worked on a PC, may not be supported on some/all servers. They are potentially much less plug and play, than PCs. There are many gotchas, for the unwary.Ideally, get just about everything you need, in the original server purchase. Which should solve compatibility issues.They are more tricky to upgrade (unless you have lots of experience with them), there can be little physical room to expand them (rack ones), and may need special PCI/cards, to fit in a rack case.You ideally need to decide if you need/want, certain server features. Such as remote (network) management ports (BMI/IPMI/etc), SATA and/or SAS disks, hardware raid (differing types), how much ECC ram (it often seems to be cheaper to get the right amount of ram, from the beginning), and other stuff, such as graphics cards (and/or professional computation/AI ones), if required.They often DON'T include the hard disk caddies, which can be an annoying extra cost.Later servers, would be more inclined to offer better SSD drive support.Dual power-supplies, was for the original high availability use of the servers. For light home casual use, a single power supply may be fine.1U (small height) servers, tend to be extremely noisy. Even if in a room/place, well away from people, just working near it for brief periods, can still be very annoying/distracting. It literally can sound like a jet-aircraft is taking off in the room (REALLY!).2U (partly taller) servers, are usually a lot quieter, as they have bigger fans, that don't need to spin up to such high RPMs. But they can still be quite noisy.You can now get rather modern tiny/small, powerful, lots of Ethernet connections, servers. With super-fast M.2 SSDs.You can get numerous specifications, prices etc, so don't panic.Here is an example:

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 12:53:03 am
content: One of my own firewall projects uses aMikroTik RouterBoard M33G, a dual-core MIPS MT7621A running at 880 MHz with 256 MiB of RAM, using OpenWRT (derivative). It does also run some custom IOT and network connectivity monitoring stuff, plus Dynamic DNS and OpenVPN. Cost is about 60€ new, plus an LTE modem unless you have wired Internet connection.These things are the opposite of typical "servers" –– I like to use the term "appliance" –– exactly because they're so memory-constrained, even though they do do server stuff, and run a server-oriented Linux distribution. For "reasons", mine does actually have a PCIe SSD (M33G supports up to 2242 size-wise), but typically there are also heavy limitations on storage use, affecting things like semi-permanent logging.(I do also have more typical routers running OpenWRT, mostly acting as a bridge between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi, and my wired untrusted LAN sections.)Currently under development is a funky little service running on OpenWRT that consumes minimal RAM, and reacts to connection attempts by banning the entire IP address for a specified duration. That is, you can still poke at the firewall ports, but any packets from that IP address on the internet will not be forwarded to the LAN by the firewall at all. Access attempt pattern (ports and frequency) will determine the duration. It's an idea I developed based on years of fail2ban use on non-memory-constrained machines. I'm looking at wiring kernel netfilter packet logs also, so that direct (non-OpenVPN) connection attempts to specific ports on any LAN address will trigger that also, without having to be promiscuous.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 01:07:18 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on March 01, 2023, 12:53:03 amThings are changing. I think such devices, have become very popular in Japan. Where they wanted to add (potentially) lots of virtualization (lots of VMs, likes lots of ram to be available, usually). So, memory capacities (specific device dependent), of 32 GB or even 64 GB, is perfectly doable now. If I remember, correctly.Even ones with quite a few cores (at least 8, maybe more), not too far from desk top speeds, despite relatively low energy consumption.Because they essentially typically use the mobile rather than the desktop, versions of the CPUs.They can be quite reasonably priced, as well.The three things they don't do well, are significant expandability, graphics cards or long term, high CPU loads, as their cooling solutions are often not suited for such extended, high load duty-cycles.But many server uses, are fine with such specifications.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 01:12:40 am
content: When I last worked with this stuff we were starting to see more and more blade servers, an entire computer on a cartridge that plugged into a rack mounted cage. It was all about higher density, packing more and more physical servers into a rack. They had little storage though, typically just a pair of 2.5" HDDs as I recall. These days everything I deal with is VMs, I don't even know what the actual hardware it runs on is, my current employer relies heavily on AWS.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 02:04:08 am
content: Quote from: MK14 on March 01, 2023, 12:11:18 amI will watch the videos, thank you.One of the reasons I put in a budget is giving myself room for screw ups and buying peripherals I didn't expect, like you mention the caddies that catch a lot of folks out. Buying a few thousand $ server is no big deal to me, but then I do that and get stuck with expensive mods ...and then I get pissed. $400 and another $500 for some mods to get that snappy server is fine. And I learn a lot. I paid like $3000 in total for my Synology setup, so to split that into a SAN and a cool server I can do all kinds of other stuff with makes sense. I can even sell the Syn and probably break even.I treat this more like score in a game than real money, maybe like golf where you try and go low? I try and get everything I want by imposing a budget, its good mental exercise. If I fuck it up I would buy a second server or whatever to remedy it, but the point of this game is to get a kickass server for as little as possible.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 02:12:07 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on March 01, 2023, 12:53:03 amI dont get it man. Ignore, not ignore? Or learn to take a joke. We're all engineers. Friends, even.I have a MikroTik, I have been learning about Docker and the idea of shifting my torrenting directly into a virtualized environment on my router and visible via a browser from anywhere in my LAN, and my router has a wireguard vpn bound to that docker instance, is pretty intriguing.I am stuck getting the router to narrow the VPN to just 1 router port and anything downstream is automatically in the VPN. It just doesn't work... yet.I must say that getting up to speed with MikroTik is a pain in the ass, but now somewhat adapted, its a way better system than what I had with Ubiquiti, RouterOS is quite usable.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 02:27:46 am
content: Quote from: james_s on March 01, 2023, 01:12:40 amI don't know the era you are talking about but its likely the same era where virtualization became the rage, in like 2 years we went from begging network admins for remote desktop access into servers to never seeing another base OS again.The virtualization move only made sense from the perspective of cloud because when I saw it happen, I always led me to wonder why they didn't just design an OS from the beginning that kept this kind of containment. Oh. Its not profitable. AWS and Azure want it easy to virtualize, not contain an OS. Virtualization is a way to sell subscription based services, the engineering problem is another one altogether, and quite a lot simpler.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 02:47:07 am
content: Quote from: mapleLC on February 28, 2023, 01:11:27 pmI would say, you have two options:1. Build a PC yourself out of off-the-shelf hardware that has the specifications you desire.2. Buy some second-hand servers (I tend to stick with Dell or IBM/Lenovo) with the specs you desire and experiment/tinker. But expect to run into unexpected issues if you are unfamiliar with enterprise hardware.You mentioned "throughput" and multiple users, which is quite a broad statement. Do you mean throughput in terms of networking performance (i.e.: 10 Gigabits and higher), or disk performance, or are you "crunching numbers" and require high spec CPUs? It really all comes down to what the purpose of it is and what operating system and applications you're planning to run on it. There is no "best" server/computer. Budget is also a consideration and probably the most limiting factor.Quote from: mapleLC on March 01, 2023, 02:27:46 amI configured virtualisation for a company I worked for around 2002/2003. I doubt you'll want hardware from back then?

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 03:02:15 am
content: Quote from: mapleLC on March 01, 2023, 02:27:46 amThe great thing about virtualization (once its learning curve has been sorted out). Is that instead of perhaps needing 6 or 7 servers, but only buying (making do with) 4. You can buy perhaps 2 good servers, one as a SAN/NAS and the other to run VMs on (full VMs). You can then spin up as many VMs (within reason), that you need, on the virtualization server.You can even mess around and experiment, to your hearts content. With various VMs, creating them, shutting them down or even deleting them. Until things are working out as intended.Quote from: mapleLC on March 01, 2023, 02:27:46 amIn a sense, they have that now. By using Containers/Jails/Docker etc, it is somewhat similar, to what you just said. I.e. Containers/Jails/Docker, let you do just that and effectively partition the same OS, into different containment sections. Hence the terms such as Containers/Jails/Docker and so on.If you start out with TrueNAS (for use as your SAN, as in another of your threads), on a reasonably capable server. It should let you do virtualization and its version of Containers/Jails/Docker, as well. It is NOT brilliant at that task (real dedicated virtualization use servers computers, is better), but good enough for initially playing around and later full-time light use.EDIT: Edited, to better differentiate, between full VMs (with their own OS, like a separate/new server or computer) and Containers/Jails/Docker, which are much lighter, resource wise.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 04:20:23 am
content: In the light of a better idea on what you need, this suggestion could easily change. But as a first throw, at something 'good enough' and real cheap, to start off from.https://www.ebay.com/itm/175584212280?hash=item28e1a27538:g:cusAAOSwhN5jzq6A&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAABIIbO8iMZnnPFtXirOTLr%2FdUkocPhxFc86ABAILCpV02MFBWxRCDhw5tqzVhuJIwfFkgHXJ%2BRl8PsczcWXgI2%2BRkMVgMhOM3xSeGf3Rj6HDjJ0eJY3MiQAFebxHfOxV2buQ%2B6jEg%2BGZp%2BMg4ryUjoXMf%2FeojElXHANMfj5z6%2BYD1qD5CrzR%2FeTyR4mAfukKrBbfP8f%2BQ3QRlzM9SWtDNuTm7UfdBzUwi25qB9EdL6F7e5GMlJ7SbCCZGTVWj0%2FACfwdZ8f3qfeKsfFfRSOXzZxJlB1QAuh3wAfCSPCIvb%2F84xqa0eLVP0QU7pSXcntmsLtVKXmyR5FZQiFjeZNW6Hem87hXC3DRJyjMs4eM3E034wABEiGZ6mjeXcU6kisogd9Q%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABFBMtO_1tdNhSpec:Lenovo P410 ThinkStation Intel E5-2680 V4 2.40GHz 14C 64GB 512GB SSD Win10ProWhich is $273.So, it is a Lenovo, which is one of the better makes.In a tower case, which can be more convenient for home use, and makes it more like a PC.14 Core, 28 Thread CPU (Broadwell), which is somewhat recent (opinions can vary). 14 is a fair number, and could make a number of VMs, at quite decent performance (especially for the money).64 GB ram, which is plenty for many things, including various virtualization options.The windows can be overwritten with Linux, as necessary.A 512GB SSD, is a starting point, which could be expanded, in the future.It seems to be missing a graphics card. But you can either use the cheapest, basic display card (which is suitable/compatible) you can get (or already have), or choose something, better, depending on what you want to use it for.At that price. You would probably get much of your money back, when/if you have finished with it.It would use more energy than a standard PC, but you are getting a big 64 GB of ram, and 14 cores, 28 threads, as opposed to perhaps 4 cores, 8 GB ram, if it was a used, older PC.

author: DimitriP
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 07:04:20 am
content: The E5-2680 v4 @2.4 GHz was dog slow in 2016 when it was "new". Slower than a CPU from 2014Now it's an even slower dog!https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/2779vs2275vs5060/Intel-Xeon-E5-2680-v4-vs-Intel-i7-4790K-vs-Intel-i7-13700KDecommisioned servers are big, noisy, heavy slow and dirt cheap.Hell, there are some new servers that are dog slow and not dirt cheap.But that's another thread altogether.

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 07:36:41 am
content: Quote from: shapirus on February 28, 2023, 07:42:44 pmMy wording was wrong. I meant more like redundancy for (non-critical) services. With today's VMs you can quickly move services where you want them and it's still useful to have some extra hardware where you can have things running temporarily. Backup is entirely another class of things.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 08:35:21 am
content: Hello,A few years ago, I was looking at second hand servers on eBay, as well. I was surprised how cheap some were and quickly decided I want to have one!I ended up purchasing three (!) IBM X3650 M3 rack servers over the period of 6 months. They were that cheap (100-200 Euro each).What did I use them for? To be honest, the single use I gave them was to educate myself on the following topics:- Windows Server- Virtualizing Machines - using VMWare vSphere- Having hosts for multiple different virtual machines- Creation of parallel virtual network for IPTV applications (without crashing my regular home network)- etc.Considering this learning experience, the money I invested was exceptionally well spent. Because I am a teacher, too, I have access to educational licenses of Microsoft and Autodesk software, which were used for my testes and learning.Using such servers as opossed to regular computers has a few advantages:- You get remote admin modules on BIOS level, so you can remote control the server without having to use attached keyboard, monitor or mouse- You get redundant PSU, in case something goes wrong (not very likely)- You get LOADS of RAM - purchase wisely and the RAM already comes fitted in the machine, otherwise the RAM modules were cheap themselfes, so I have the servers with >64GB RAM (some 96GB, some only 64GB). This allows to test CAD/CAM projects without hitting the normal memory limit of i.e. my work laptop, which already has less common 32GB of RAM- You get two Xeon class CPU's, which will be less performant than newer generation Intel Core i7/i9, but you will get more threads: on my servers I get 24 threads, as opposed to the regula 8-12 threads on an Intel Core i7. Note that you need to be doing parallel processing to take advantage of this.- You can fit a lot of disks. One of the 3 servers came with 12 bays and yes, you can use regular 2.5" SDD or SATA drivesThe cons are:- The servers make a lot of noise, due to the PSU's and CPU coolers. A lot of noise means that I cannot leave the servers switched on at night, because I will hear them when in bed, which is a different floor!- The power consumtion is noticeable, even when the servers are in standby (so that I can access the remote monitor tool that allows i.e. to switch them on). Due to current energy price, I have switched the servers off (unplugged the power cable)- The CPU performance is less than a modern Intel Core i7 or Core i9. Modern Intel Core i9 come wih 16 threads (if I am not mistaken), so even that is no longer a big advantage anymore. I am only speaking of Intel, but go to AMD Ryzen and you get a single CPU with more threads than my servers.- Spare parts can be expensive - it might be cheaper do actually buy a second server for parts! This is why I got my third server, but then I ended up to get all three working as desired...Because of the success I had for MY GOALS, I ended up purchasing a second hand Dell server for the company I work for. This server cost about 1000 Euro and came with 4 CPU's and a total of 80 threads (!) and 256GB of RAM (!). I used this server to develop a cloud based CAM managing application that could significantly reduce CAM calculation time by splitting up one project in several parallel projects. We never sold this solution, but it was enough to show a big customer how calculation speed could be reduced - they stopped bugging us. The same application allowed us to show the manufacturer of the CAM software how they could increase calculation speed. This single application paid off the investment on this server.Finally I ended up buying a HP Z600 workstation for myself, which uses the same processor and memory type than my 3 servers. With this I ended up with a workstation running on 96GB RAM and 24 threads. Impressive for CAD/CAM applications and cost me less than 300 Euro.Why are used servers so cheap? Because they have been written off and because the performance / running costs are worse than newer generation servers.Conclusion: for a running system, buy a new machine, as it will be cheaper over its intended life span (considering the energy price to run it).If you want to own a rack server, because you want to learn and investigate how to use, what to use it for and because you find it cool: go for it.Regards,Vitor

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 09:02:37 am
content: Forgot to answer OP's question:In my research I found that the most intersting rack servers are made by either IBM, HP or DELL.I did not find great offers for HP machines, though.You will find that different generations of IBM or DELL servers have their very own price range.Considering your budget, look for what models fit the budget and go from there.As a tip: do not try to buy a "better" machine outside your budget, because it comes with no memory modules, CPU's or disks, thinking you can buy them cheaply afterwards. That will be a losing game, as separate CPU's memory and HDD add considerably to the price.The better purchase is to buy a LOADED machine that comes with lots of RAM and best CPU's of the family.Also, make sure you get HDD bays! Servers often only come with plastic covers over the slots. To insert a HDD you need the bay. A bay can cost ridiculously more money than the price difference to an offer that includes them.Finally, note that while a server can support a given CPU family (from worst to best CPU), you might need matching coolers! If you get the server fitted with the worst CPU and then purchase second hand CPU of the best kind, they might not work with included heat sink and cooler. Changing them might end up expensive!Without specifying your budget and intended application, it is impossible to give you better advise.Regards,Vitor

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 01:17:41 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on March 01, 2023, 02:47:07 amThroughput is a generic word for the machines ability to receive, process, and deliver work, typically packets. We used the word a lot when there were databases involved and you had to tune everything.The word represents a holistic view of the machine's capacity for work, and throughput was a general measure of how well a system could perform as a unit, then again benchmarked when merged into the wider system.Its back to purpose and the point of the search... I want a generic machine with a large capacity for work, I can tune it from there. It seems one decision that is obvious is to get a machine already outfitted with 2 processors. That hunt seems problematic.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 01:25:18 pm
content: Quote from: MK14 on March 01, 2023, 03:02:15 amThe Docker seems like a tool to fill the gap. The same base operating systems are still there, perhaps save for Linux pared down to the basics to run Docker. What I think makes sense here is to see an OS designed from the ground up, fit for purpose. Virtualization has taken off to the point that its a need that someone out there could fill. Who knows, someone is doing it perhaps. But I don't mean taking Windows Server and dumbing it down so it uses less memory. An OS designed for virtualization would be more of a terminal, as simplistic as possible with usability and stability being the core feature of the OS. A virtual host OS can never crash, and windows crashes.Its not topical, but has virtualization been done over POE yet?

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 01:33:16 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on March 01, 2023, 09:02:37 amI would agree that those 3 represent the larger market share and yes I have seen machines stripped of parts and it tends to cost more to finish outfitting it.The only problem with those 3 brands is how proprietary they tend to be. I was wondering about Fujitsu because they are specifically not a software company. Wouldn't that lend itself to the Fujitsu units being more generic in this sense?The problem is they seem more expensive, I wonder why. Is it because they are a smaller player, or are they making the better server with better internals. Do you or anyone know the Fujitsus?

author: M0HZH
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 01:47:34 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on March 01, 2023, 01:25:18 pmNot sure what you mean. People are running RPis in clusters for years now, with only an Ethernet cable that provides power & connectivity and a managed switch to turn on/off/restart individual nodes.

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 02:02:22 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on March 01, 2023, 01:25:18 pmI wouldn't say never crash. We have three environments. VMware ESXi, Redhat Virtualization (RHV), which is KVM-based and Microsoft HyperV. The first two are pretty stable, the third one is the one that locks up now and then, maybe because it runs on Windows Server. ESXi is a barebones linux (you can even run it from an SD card) and RHV pretty basic Redhat. You manage both through a web interface. The successor to RHV is Openshift (but I haven't used it). VMware in my experience is good for mixed OS environments, whereas HyperV is used mostly for Windows and RHV for Linux (you can mix OS's, though). But this is my experience as a co-admin from a smaller environment of about 10 hosts and 30-50 VMs over a number of years. On workstation computers I've used Virtualbox and KVM/QEMU. There are pro's and cons of every virtualization environment.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 02:34:00 pm
content: "The only problem with those 3 brands is how proprietary they tend to be."Hardware-wise, appart from memory modules, CPU's and harddisks, the rest is pretty proprietary. You won't be able to easily swap coolers, heatsinks or other components. Plus, most is soldered anyway.Software-wise, these machines have specific applications for which they were designed. Because I don't have much interest in Linux nowadays, I can only reply the experience with Windows Server and VMWare ESXi: as the universe of rack servers is much smaller than generic PC's, both operating systems recognized the server right away - I did not have to install any drivers.I guess this is the case for any generic mainstream rack server.I don't know a thing about Fujitsu-Siemens server and i would expect them to be rather a niche product. That alone will raise the price: imagine you have a Fujitsu server running, which is doing its job for years. The saying "never touch a running system applies". What if suddenly a component of the server breaks, like the fan, the PSU or a component on the mainboard? Well, if I was the admin, I would buy a second hand server and exchange the disks or the broken component and would have everything running in no time. The sellers know this and adjust the asking price correspondingly.Not the case with X3650M3 servers, as there are too many being sold.I guess this explains the price difference.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 03:19:05 pm
content: Quote from: JohanH on March 01, 2023, 02:02:22 pmWithout too deep a dive into virtualization of which my knowledge breaks down, but there are quite specific mechanisms that virtualization hits really hard, and my best understanding is we've pieced together enough with tools on hand to deal with it, but its pretty resource intensive as a result (generally speaking).In fact, what I am probably saying is virtualization requires a redesign from the processor thru to the operating system. Again limited, but my understanding is there are fundamental limitations in typical setups. You sort of need a new SGI type company, but trying to get anything done now, at scale, is at least a 10 figure problem, then add to that training a whole ecosystem. Linus might be the last of his kind mainly because what he did was possible when he did it. I would imagine the kernel necessary for something like this would be quite incredible.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 09:02:24 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on February 28, 2023, 10:58:42 pmNo.Trolling is the specific act of deliberately posting nonsense to get people triggered.I'm triggered and literally shaking when people conflate trolling with plain stupidity.editMaybe you are trolling me?If so, good job, I fell for it

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 10:23:54 pm
content: Quote from: magic on March 01, 2023, 09:02:24 pmI admit your theory has merit.But, how to tell the difference?

author: shapirus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 10:57:42 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on March 01, 2023, 10:23:54 pmThere was a good reason for the "not sure if trolling or just stupid" saying to come to life.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 01, 2023, 11:28:57 pm
content: Unless I've seriously misunderstood things, and NOT trying to disappoint the OP.There seem to be many, generic or very generic questions and no real idea of any kind of application(s), requirements, specifications, timescales, Hobby/University/Business, budget (saying really, really cheap but can go very, very expensive, doesn't really clarify the situation, that much), physical location of equipment, relevant equipment already owned and available, general background as to what is going on, etc.Analogy:I want an amplifier, cheap!Would not really be enough on a forum like this, to help that much.Audio/rf/specialist, output power, budget range, hobby/business, etc etc, to narrow it down.But E.g. Guitar Amp, up to 50 watts RMS, already got speakers, max cost $200, for my hobby. Would help a lot.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2023, 12:29:42 am
content: Quote from: MK14 on March 01, 2023, 11:28:57 pmIts less misunderstanding and seems more wilful. I provided the car analogy, you have your amp. The wilful part is sidestepping the information I have provided and, like a few others, remain stuck ramming this notion of specificity before assistance. Read thru the thread looking for what could be crafted into requirements, there are probably 20 from what I have said so far.The same forum was able to help me decide on a SAN. Same "computers" subforum. Strange.Overall: Generic machine with lots of capacity for work, more specifically...Lots of processing powerLots of throughputModern connection ports, etcDual procsLarger form factor to accommodate changeIntention to work with a SANLinuxEmphasis on non-proprietary productsEmphasis on stability and quality"Snappy" UI experienceDecommissioned price point (hundreds not thousands)Fairly complete unit, no empty shellsI'm afraid I don't understand why this is not enough info because it seems like it is, so something more pedantic is happening, and now we see some people's lack of class is showing.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2023, 12:30:25 am
content: Quote from: MK14 on March 01, 2023, 11:28:57 pmThat's why I gave up trying to help. This is a case of "garbage in, garbage out". There is insufficient input data to produce a useful output beyond "search for Dell, HP or IBM server and sort by price + shipping, lowest first" All attempts to extract additional useful data to input were met with hostility. If there is no specific application or list of desired features, then there is nothing to push any specific server model higher on the list."I just want a transistor that's cheap""What do you want to do with it?""Transistor stuff!"Ok then go to digikey, search for "transistor" and sort by price. That's the best advice anyone can give in that case, "transistor" and "cheap"are the only criteria given. It does no good to suggest a specific part number without having at least a vague application in mind.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2023, 12:44:35 am
content: Quote from: james_s on March 02, 2023, 12:30:25 amYou didn't give up, you stopped listening because of imaginary standing on this forum, it leads you to think you can push people around. I have provided lots of information, if you chose to listen instead of eat up this thread with oblivion posts, you'd see that. Here, I will repeat the few from my last post. Try reading instead of trying to lead the charge of ganging up on someone.If you felt I was still vague after below, I invited you and other to find something more interesting to do with your time, but no, your time is better spent here recycling an empty point. You cant help me. Fine, bye. But no, you stick around here for what possible reason other than to be an irritant?Overall: Generic machine with lots of capacity for work, more specifically...Lots of processing powerLots of throughputModern connection ports, etcDual procsLarger form factor to accommodate changeIntention to work with a SANLinuxEmphasis on non-proprietary productsEmphasis on stability and quality"Snappy" UI experienceDecommissioned price point (hundreds not thousands)Fairly complete unit, no empty shells

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2023, 12:59:25 am
content: Quote from: mapleLC on March 02, 2023, 12:29:42 amThanks for trying to answer the question, but that wouldn't really help.If that information exists, but in twenty different places, in multi-page threads (there seem to be 2, already). You can't expect people to read through many pages of stuff, and various text paragraphs, in order to determine a requirements/specification guide, so they know what you want. That is not really reasonable.Much of what you said, seems to show that you are climbing the learning experience curve, as regards servers and stuff, rather than being the right sort of information, to help others, help you.Specific examples:"Snappy" UI experience"The users of your server(s) (if there are any, it still is not clear, what it is suppose to be doing), don't communicate with the user interfaces, of the server. They are only for administrators and such to access.Or you mean the user interfaces, of the application(s). In which case, we would need to know, what these applications are, what programming languages, databases, communications protocols etc, are being used.I'm still not seeing the right information.You seem to be describing what you think the solution(s) are, and describing those solution(s) in very arbitrary ways.We would need to know what problem(s), you are trying to solve, and other requirements/specifications and details."Lots of processing power"That can mean a number of things, and is relative/arbitrary. A Raspberry PI, has lots of processing power, compared to many things, especially ones from the past.Fast single thread (core) speed, or many cores needed, etc.Now that you seem to be declaring the budget to be a few hundred dollars. That doesn't really allow, a huge range of modern computing options.If you go too cheap, you can end up buying piles of junk, rather than useful bits of kit, especially if you are still climbing the learning curve, as to server technology."I'm afraid I don't understand why this is not enough info because it seems like it is, so something more pedantic is happening, and now we see some people's lack of class is showing."Well if you think that "we" are the problem, I'm not sure that I can do a lot about that.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2023, 01:13:04 am
content: "UI" and "server" don't really belong in the same sentence in general. Most servers have only a very basic video interface, and in many cases it is not even hooked up unless you have the thing on the bench to reinstall the OS or something. Some have no video at all, everything is done via command line in a terminal. Typically all of the ports are very basic, you might have a serial port and a couple of USB ports, the primary interface will be the network adapter(s) as the whole point of a server is serving data over a network. They may have lots of cores, or fast cores, or lots of storage, or redundant storage, lots of RAM, etc, depending on the intended application. If there is no application then there is no reason to pick one configuration over another, may as well shop by price. They're all proprietary, much more so than desktop PCs. They're all high quality and stable. None are really meant to be highly upgradable, servers are typically purchased in a specific configuration and used that way until they are obsolete and decommissioned. The only "upgrade" I can recall ever making was replacing hard disks that failed with larger ones.Servers get decommissioned because they're old and slow relative to what is available now. By the time a $10k-$30k server is a few hundred bucks it isn't likely to be powerful by any measure compared to contemporary consumer PCs.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2023, 11:08:10 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on March 01, 2023, 10:23:54 pmOne can never be 100% sure, but owning unusual things for the sake of owning them appears to be a fairly common paraphilia. And equally common are people expecting quality advice without telling what applications they have in mind. "It's none of your business, just tell me where the good stuff is" - I have heard it many times from people being absolutely dead serious.Of course somebody could be pretending to be that, but then I tend to assume that deliberate trolls rationally optimize their reward to effort raito. Writing long and elaborate posts to maybe annoy two or three guys trying to help doesn't look like efficient trolling. There exist both lower hanging fruit for opportunistic trolls and higher reward targets for the truly dedicated high effort trolls

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2023, 11:18:24 am
content: Quote from: magic on March 02, 2023, 11:08:10 amThanks, that is a good post. It has helped me understand this thread, better.If that is the case. It would be better if they were clearer about that, then it would be easier to respond effectively.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2023, 03:28:01 pm
content: I've referred back to this several times now, so I thought I would share it as it's proving useful, particularly the manufacture dates.https://www.cpu-world.com/info/Intel/Intel_Xeon.htmlI has a list of all late model XEONs.There is one for AMD but this just for the EPYC line:https://www.cpu-world.com/info/AMD/AMD_EPYC.html

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2023, 03:46:25 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on March 02, 2023, 01:13:04 amExactly. The management is most often done via SSH (at the userspace level); via IPMI (on hardware servers, using a dedicated Ethernet connection); or via SSH and tools in the host OS (when using virtual servers).There are many really interesting features in the Linux kernel as to server management; many mistakenly believe such features are available only in "big iron" (dedicated hardware and OSes not compatible with desktop systems). For example, checkpoint and restore in userspace (CRIU, used nowadays for snapshotting and migrating containers and applications) support was first suggested/introduced in 2011, and all functionality required included in the Linux kernel (3.11) by 2013. (SeeCRIUat Wikipedia.) It wasn't the first in Linux, though, as Berkeley Lab Checkpoint/Restart (BLCR) was developed for similar purpose for high-performance computing (migrating computing processes from one node to another) for 2.4 and 2.6 kernels since 2004/2005 (seecrd.lbl.gov).I listed many of the differences between "server" types and selection criteria I've used in practice in#32.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2023, 11:00:29 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on March 02, 2023, 03:46:25 pmA bit of #32QuoteYour the special guy which seems to believe he can attack someone's character/intentions and expect a response by doubling it down and talking past me to the thread -because of assumed attention span problems.I read your post and chose not to reply. Your being a barnacle on the thread, you and a few other. Sadly, you aren't dumb, so my thoughts on your post were more positive than you assumed them to be.Perhaps reflect on why you're tossing the word salad together with a couple of others, helping ensure the thread has no tangible value to the community, then re-quote yourself because everyone should re-read your saintly offering. These gatekeepers with fantasies about their special capacity to ward others off from participating... it's kinda fashy.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2023, 12:13:31 am
content: Please stay on topic, and discuss server(s).

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2023, 06:52:50 am
content: Quote from: mapleLC on March 02, 2023, 11:00:29 pmMost participants left after your refusal to answer questions they asked. At this point all that's left is you quarreling with fascists.But go ahead and blame all your woes on a recovering StackOverflow addict

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2023, 02:32:51 pm
content: Quote from: magic on March 03, 2023, 06:52:50 amYou meanie! I wasn't addicted to StackOverflow, I am addicted to solving problems.As to this thread, the Ignore list is a facility you find in your own Profile > Summary page, Modify Profile > Buddies/Ignore list > Edit Ignore List. When you put member names there, you no longer see their posts, just a "You are ignoring this user." text in place of their post. This lets you continue participating in the thread, while comfortably ignoring posts by member(s) you cannot usefully interact with. You do see quotes by others, though, like the one above.The only reason I mention when I add someone like mapleLC to my ignore list, is so that anyone reading the thread afterwards knows why I do not respond to that member even if they ask a direct question or post a comment to mine. There is no intention of advising others to do the same, at all.(In comparison, when someone detaches themselves from a thread, they usually use language like "I'm out" or similar.)As far as I have seen, other members use it in the same manner.Besides, I am known for being direct/confrontrational/grumpy (as well as overly verbose,but still always trying to help) here.Nobody"follows my lead" on ignoring others. Just ask magic: we often argue about things and disagree, occasionally agree, but I still love to see his contributions here. Not because of who or what I think magic is, but because I find their posts informative, and interaction mutually useful.The only thing I value more than a good fact-based argument that yields possibilities for (myself, and others) learning new stuff, is when experienced members help others.The thing with true help is that it is not personal. We do not respond to you to helpjust you.When public, either forums or mailing lists, there is always the expectation that others have or will have a similar problem, so it pays best for everybody to examine the problem and solve it in a manner that allows solving all similar related problems. It is the same thing as in free/open source projects, where being an "user" has zero value, and to get the developers to fix something or add a feature, the "user" has to show their willingness to spend time and effort to help the solve the problem. That changes one from an "user" to a "contributor", you see. It is that time and effort that is the currency; here also.Things like reporting back after getting suggestions, describing what choices they made afterwards, and the results, even in just a couple of sentences, is not just a courtesy, it is a requirement for continued mutually beneficial interaction.mapleLC, you're not being ignored because there is a clique here that has decided to dislike you. There are only individual members who dislike the way you approach this forum and express yourself. It isn't personal, though, at all; if you just change the way you communicate a bit, you'll fit in just fine, and nobody will ignore you. After all, nobody knows anything about "mapleLC" except what they have posted, and while changing ones own personality is not possible, adjusting ones own way of communicating with others is something that everybody does, unless they become a hermit.For one, Dave doesn't tolerate such social cliques, you see. But more importantly, we're here to talk tech: engineering, science, experience; not social stuff.If you are a technical as opposed to social person, I suggest you go and look at some Beginners or Projects threads, where new members have successfully been helped by some of the experienced members here, like say David Hess. (They are an excellent example because of their friendly and concise manner of helping, but they will ignore threads where the asker/original poster does not show the abovementioned reciprocality first, and instead will just demand a solution.) Compare how those threads go, to this thread, and you'll see where you shot yourself in the foot.Fortunately, nobody cares for long –– I myself purge my ignore list every month or two ––, so if you just adjust your wordage/tone/approach, you'll immediately see a change in responses.Remember, showing your own attempts first, and showing that you are willing to spend time and effort yourself to solve the problem you are asking for help with, is the most important thing: much more than being "courteous" or "humble" or anything like that. It is easily experimentally verified, if you don't believe it.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2023, 05:42:36 pm
content: Anyway you all forget *THE* most importing item for servers!!! Where do you stack them?!?Dirty cheap decomissioned servers, but a middle rack cabinet to host computers is dirty expensive!!!Poor man solution -> buy shelving with lots of shelves(I am not a serious personmy computer room looks more like a cellar withhanging hamsandsalamis)

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2023, 06:32:16 pm
content: I use the cheap IKEA tables!Buy two of them, turn one the upside down and screw the table top on the legs of the first table. You get a cheap rack in black or white for little money!https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/lack-side-table-black-20011408/

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2023, 06:35:52 pm
content: Maybe it depends on where you are but I've seen lots of racks offered for free or very cheap, they're hard to get rid of. Most of them are around 6 feet tall though, the short ones are harder to come by.

author: NivagSwerdna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2023, 07:49:22 pm
content: FWIW (and to be honest I haven't read the whole thread)...4 years ago I bought a Fujitsu Primergy TX1310 M1 to run my home stuff; it runs ESXi (free for one server) and does enough to keep my stuff going.You should be able to get something comparable for very little.This was a computational trade up from my previous device which was a HP Microserver N36L? I have a feeling I was forced to move due to ESXi no longer supporting that platform.Fujitsu second hand is my recommendation.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2023, 01:15:52 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on March 03, 2023, 06:35:52 pmI got asked more than 400 UKP for a brand new Triton Rack 19" 32U

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2023, 01:38:07 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on March 03, 2023, 06:32:16 pmCostco metal racks with a rubber mat under each row.Quote from: DiTBho on March 03, 2023, 05:42:36 pmI have a server rack but I find it more useful for lab equipment than network gear. It has a switch on it since the lab is on the other side of the house so I needed a switching location there to get at everything else in the house. By the way, its a great switch for very little money because its totally silent, no fans. But the other models with more ports have fans, so you want the 24 port for close proximity. Cisco SG500-28The P and other derivatives have fans, this is the more bare bones version without POE support. It has SFP. SFP+, so it was ideal for what I needed. I didn't expect it to be silent, I was preparing to open it and change them out for Noctuas but no need!Its a solid switch on its own, the best feature is it's silent. There are a bunch on ebay for the 100$ range.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 06, 2023, 04:32:02 am
content: Quote from: mapleLC on March 02, 2023, 12:44:35 amYou still haven't really provided much details. If you told us "I want to build a server capable of storing 50 terabytes of data, but don't want to use Windows, in a 10 Gigabit environment, what are my options?" that would have been more helpful.I'm starting to think you just want to buy a bunch of cheap servers and re-sell them for profit. Would that be accurate?

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 06, 2023, 10:20:31 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on March 06, 2023, 04:32:02 amIf I had that intention, I would start a recycling business with a 501 c3 and then a separate company I can sell myself all this donated material to, then sell it to the weary. It's a labor intensive business that cannot use the typical workforce deployed for recycling as it requires computer skills.I can think of better places to invest my time than junk retail. I'm going to take a swipe and tell you that it's NOT accurate, dear lad.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 06, 2023, 10:31:20 am
content: Initially I had figured that searching for a server would mean I would land on something "close enough" that I can take the last few legs. The more familiar I become with the server world, the more compromises I am discovering which would end up costing me.Looking at a server spec that I would be happy with, the conclusion is that it wouldn't be durable enough, and this seems to be a requirement that's evolved out of this search. To put the effort into setting this up properly, I would like to see a stable environment for at least 10 years of service, perhaps more.I've spent a couple of days studying what it would look like to accumulate parts and put together a server versus what was generally available to buy. I would need to spend about $2400 for a used server, and I would be able to put together the same spec for about $1500 or so if I do it myself.I have narrowed down a start point, regardless of direction, and it looks to be the 3647 socket and something within that Xeon family of processors. The decision is for dual procs, at least 20 cores each, and that gives me something to build around.These are the processors available, if anyone has thoughts, or believes a different socket is a must have, please say so.https://www.cpu-world.com/Related_CPUs/Socket%203647_Skylake.html

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 06, 2023, 12:58:26 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on March 06, 2023, 10:31:20 amTo.....do.....what.....? You've still given us no idea what you actually want to do with the thing.Quote from: mapleLC on March 06, 2023, 10:31:20 am*so*, but I'm not going to tell you why.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 06, 2023, 09:39:43 pm
content: I thought this was interesting, he goes thru all the HP models, G1 to G9... way back when it used to be Compaq.

author: Haenk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 08, 2023, 03:36:04 pm
content: Honestly, there are lots of different types of servers. All qualify as "server", but some will meet certain requirements, others don't. And they mostly can't be transfered into another type.So: How much processing power do you need?How much memory do you need?How much disk space do you need? RAID level? Hot plug disks?How many extension cards do you need?Budget?For example, we are running a couple of HP ML350, those are IMHO pretty nice allround servers. We have HDD cages, additional RAID controllers, 10G ethernet and plenty if memory.Then we have an HP mini server 4bay non RAID, a Mac mini server, a NAS and more stuff.But without knowing the use case, any recommendation is pointless...

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2023, 02:50:19 pm
content: Quote from: Haenk on March 08, 2023, 03:36:04 pmBelow are the requirements as I recently stated them after being prodded by a bunch of friendlies.Since I am several days deeper into the process, I can define my requirements a bit more specifically, but its probably still not enough for the barnaclavia. A few topics I have actually come full circle on, for example the idea of starting with an empty shell.Revised:Quote

author: Haenk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 12, 2023, 11:41:21 am
content: 1500 as a limit is not going to happen, considering the listed featuresIMHOBut maybe you are having luck buying from a bankrupt startup or whatever.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 12, 2023, 01:05:56 pm
content: Quote from: Haenk on March 12, 2023, 11:41:21 amMost products 2nd hand? I think the budget is well within reason. I'll tally it as I go, see where it lands so others can get a sense.

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 12, 2023, 10:37:05 pm
content: Quote from: Haenk on March 12, 2023, 11:41:21 amThere are occasional boxes that hit the features at that price, but the same question remains as everyone else raised: why? A workstation with networking cards will have the same "specifications" at half that price or so.

author: Black Phoenix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 13, 2023, 03:41:53 am
content: https://youtube.com/@CraftComputingWatch this guy. He sometimes have some projects with cheap hardware and decommissioned servers. Probably something he uses or had tested fit your needs.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 13, 2023, 02:30:37 pm
content: Quote from: Black Phoenix on March 13, 2023, 03:41:53 amUnfortunately he makes that p0rnography shocked face in his thumbnail with the wide eye open mouth stare. It's astonishing how many youtubers have adopted this strange look, not drawing the inference.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 13, 2023, 02:51:03 pm
content: It's the sad reality we live in : if you don't have some stupid picture for your videos, people don't click on videos and the algorithm punishes you.See for example Linus Tech Tips :https://www.youtube.com/@LinusTechTips/videosor Hardware Unboxed :https://www.youtube.com/@HardwareunboxedBoth have big faces with often open mouth and eyes ... it's tested and proven people click more often on such images.Anyway, it's also worth checking out sales threads of forums like WebHostingTalk or ServeTheHome, you can often find good deals on server hardware.For example, not sure how good of a deal is, but there's a listing on ServeTheHome - which in turn found it LowEndTalk - for a $950 3U server with 256 GB of memory and a 1650v2 cpus :https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/supermicro-5037mr-h8trf-3u-8-node-microcloud-servers-950.39205/1x 3U SuperServer 5037MR-H8TRF (8 NODES)16x 16GB DIMMS (256GB total)8x E5-1650V21x 10GB SFP+ (option of AOC-CTG-I1S or MCX311A-XCAT for this)1x RAIL KITUpdated FW/BIOS/IPMI90 Day Warranty$950 ($118.75 Per Node) 10% discount on orders of 10+ systems

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 13, 2023, 03:43:52 pm
content: Quote from: mariush on March 13, 2023, 02:51:03 pmThe p0rnographgy industry has shared its marketing data with youtubers... what glory has resulted.Quote from: mariush on March 13, 2023, 02:51:03 pmLooking, thank you

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2023, 09:20:23 am
content: After a bit of further research, I think the idea of Proxmox resonates as a place to land this server I'm going to build.There are several pitfalls to consider, mainly hardware, because driver support is more limited. So... a few of you are probably right that I will spend more because I will need to make more careful/expensive purchases rather than taking a swipe at the next 10g card that comes up on ebay.The specs I'm tossing around will work more than adequately for this, there will not be many users, but I've been thinking about the next 10 years and how I want to organize everything for my environment.The idea of putting up the services I use via proxmox and accesible, for example, via browser, has a lot of merit. I can run matlab, macos, scientific linux, an instance of any OS I might need, docker, and I can also virtualize a router and separate my network into a home/lab kind of thing. It also checks that dumb box of needing a windows environment around in the future for some odd need.Anyway, is there any experience with Proxmox here out of curiosity? I could jump over to there forum, but my fan base here is so strong, I thought I must ask...edit: cool, mikrotik has images you can download directlyhttps://mikrotik.com/download

author: shapirus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2023, 10:09:21 am
content: Quote from: mapleLC on March 15, 2023, 09:20:23 amVery likely it'll end up being precisely what you need.

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2023, 10:14:44 am
content: Quote from: mapleLC on March 15, 2023, 09:20:23 amThis sounds very interesting. I think we will take a look at Proxmox to see if it could be used. I hadn't even heard about it.

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2023, 11:16:25 am
content: OK, so I asked around a bit. There are people using Proxmox, but there are some potential downsides. It uses ZFS by default (if you know, you know the potential benefits/downsides). You can choose LVM, but use larger chunks than default (64 kiB by default that starves your system into 99% IOWait; use e.g. 16 MiB). To really benefit from the system, you need three instances and shared storage (for online failovers). Then you get same features as for instance RHV or VSPhere, but for free in comparison. It's based on KVM on Debian. If you install Proxmox you are dependent on their updates (you can't just run apt, it will ruin the system). So in a tightly controlled environment, you could run into CS requirement issues, unless Proxmox has fast updates cycles for CVEs (I don't know). Their paid support is an untested card (heard some negatives). Also there is always this thing with Windows clients and VirtIO. Your mileage may vary. For a production system I would evaluate it for a longer time. Currently ESxi/Vsphere is a safe card, that just works, so I'm not sure it's worth testing. For personal use, if I had three servers in my basement, I would definitely try it out.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2023, 12:53:43 pm
content: Quote from: JohanH on March 15, 2023, 11:16:25 amThanks for this, I will look at ESxi and Vsphere as alternatives before I commit. Unfortunately Proxmox gets youtube attention, so new people get sucked in when it may not be ideal.As an aside and germane to your comments, I am finding hardware support to be a substantial problem when you try and open source and or virtualize everything. I spent a day and a half trying out a conversion of a SFF PC into a router and it was endless this and endless that not supported. I could get the onboard NIC to route! A 10G card that could negotiate down from 10 to 5/2.5/1 is a real problem. I laugh that a few days ago I was going to take a fly on a 40g card...

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2023, 02:14:28 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on March 15, 2023, 12:53:43 pmWell, my take is that higher than 1 Gbit is something that is still a thing only in big business, so hard to get anywhere without throwing lots of money on it. It's always been the case until it trickles down into consumer space. I still haven't seen affordable NBASE-T equipment for consumers (yeah, maybe there is something out there now; haven't really looked lately). I guess everyone is still content with 1 Gbit ethernet (and most common people don't even know about that, only use their "wifi").

author: JohanH
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2023, 02:21:34 pm
content: Quote from: mapleLC on March 15, 2023, 12:53:43 pmFor personal use, I think Proxmox should really be considered. Esxi is a lot of money, especially if you want online failover and shared storage. You could run it on a single server, same as with Esxi. You don't just get the failover feature and shared storage benefits that way.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 18, 2023, 02:24:23 am
content: Quote from: JohanH on March 15, 2023, 02:21:34 pmFollowing up on this. I am really satisfied with Proxmox so far. On an old machine its running no problem, I have a couple of test vms up and its fine.The installation was seamless. The webui is well written. Driver support is a problem, there seems to be a sweet spot of cards that everyone knows works on linux and they are too expensive.I setup a Bookstack which I have been wanting for quite some time. I have a router running that is not completely configured, and a windows machine I wanted to virtualize.For anyone else considering proxmox, I would suggest trying it. Beyond driver support it's well appointed.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2023, 09:46:37 pm
content: Well, I can shake the thread up a bit again. Tomorrow I'm going to be picking up a total of 11 HP servers all between 2015 and 2018. No hard disks, but otherwise complete.All for a whopping $300I went into the government auction rabbit hole and managed to actually find something, bid on it, and win. It's a 4 hour drive each way, but well worth it. I can put together the best of the lot for myself, keep a couple of chassis for future builds, and still sell off what remains for enough that makes it worth the trouble.Looks like I've successfully acquired dirt cheap decomissioned servers, for better or worse!

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2023, 12:53:46 am
content: I've churned thru my booty...I have a total of 13 servers, I think I mentioned 11. The thing I am happiest about is having the chassis, I can swap anything out but have a base.9 servers are Intel, 5 are AMD. Most are single proc, a couple had dual built in. I was hoping for RAM but it was not included.Researching, I can take all the 4 core single procs and upgrade them into dual proc 8 cores x 2 = 16 cores per server. The XEON 8 core procs are like $15 each.I have not gone thru the AMDs in detail yet.From what I have now, looks like I can spec out 4 servers, each with 16 cores, 128gb ram, built in quad NIC, and I have SFP+ NICs here to add.I'll have a heap of leftover parts and will probably sell the AMD units so I can run a consistent stack. Its not going to have all the perfect bells and whistles but for this kind of money I'm happy to just toss another server at the problem.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 16, 2023, 12:29:31 am
content: Updates:Proliant servers are a pain in the ass for one reason only, they are fickle as f with memory. What a prima donna. Unless you get it perfect, it will not run.Everything else has been generally good. Parts are plentiful and cheap. I have 4 servers active, 2 dunno yet machines, 1 chassis, and 6 I decided to go ahead and sell.Selling the 6 has been a lot of work, but they are almost ready. It was a good learning experience turning them into dual proc machines, they are now each 16 cores, quite usable.Once you get 1 figured out correctly 100% then repeat it. I made the mistake of jumping around and it retarded my progress. I ordered memory 3 different times.If anyone gets a Proliant like this, here are the most important things you MUST do that I learned:Proliant DL360p Gen8 --> DDR3 PC3L-10600R - this is the only cheap memory that worksBoot it first time, and do these things in any order. Do not attempt an OS install before:Reset ILO --> F8Reset the server factory default --> F9 in the bios somewhereReset the raid array (differs) and most important set the new disk as the main boot diskSecondarily:Check that USB is active and bootableCheck the boot orderMy favorite thing is that my 4 servers are all running ProxMox, and the main OS install is a 64gb SD card. The SSD disk never touches the OS. These servers also have an internal USB, alternatively you can install the OS there.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 17, 2023, 12:43:27 am
content: Quote from: mapleLC on March 09, 2023, 02:50:19 pmAs I and others have mentioned previously, if you have aspecificrequirement, we could help you further and point you in the right direction. A specific requirement could be something like "I want to build a NAS with x-amount of storage, can do de-duplication and has y-speed network interfaces" or "I'm building a hypervisor to run x-number of machines for these particular applications".You said previously that you aren't looking to flip/re-sell these machines, so what exactly are you doing with them? Are they just for you to play around with with no specific purpose? If so, that's totally fine, I have a bunch of 12 year old Dell PowerEdge servers you can have for free for that purpose. They are by no means modern but would be a good introduction for anyone dipping their toes into enterprise gear and just wanting to learn how they differ from regular PCs.Also, forget HDMI, it's largely a consumer technology. You'll seldom see these on servers and enterprise equipment. VGA is still the standard, even today. That's not to say you can't add a video card for this specific purpose, but you generally won't find HDMI on-board (in fact, I don't think I've ever seen it in a server outside very specific use cases like controlling video walls and things like that, but even then they typically use SDI or HD-SDI).I'm also not sure what you mean by "deprecated", do you mean to say these aren't important anymore?For expand-ability, there are plenty of 2U and 4U server chassis out there that will accept larger PCIe cards. Many of the 2U models will usually have a riser card to mount full-height cards in a horizontal axis so that might be a consideration for you too, just depends on what kind of card(s) you plan on using.In terms of those brands you mentioned, they are all good, reliable brands. As you've found out with the RAM, each may have their own little quirks.Your really limiting factor is your budget. You won't get cutting-edge servers. The best bet is to look out for auctions. As companies decommission old equipment, they'll usually ship them off by the pallet load to be sold for peanuts, but in many cases, the hard drives will be removed and disposed of separately, and they don't always bother to remove them from the drive caddies.

author: mapleLC
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2023, 01:43:37 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on April 17, 2023, 12:43:27 amIts the same answer, my needs are not fixed because I know they will change. Depricated yes, means no longer required, which is evidence of that process of change as I learn and understand. If I am going to own a car I needed to just buy something a get it on the road, as it were.Quote from: Halcyon on April 17, 2023, 12:43:27 amI had no intention of that when I began, I assure you. But the volume is too large for my requirements, and I am leaving enough behind to add if needed.The purpose is more or less as you describe, though I do have a long term goal in mind, but at this stage its a matter of "toying" with some things and other are more serious. For example, I had to spend a few hours studying ossec to see if it was fit for purpose, when it comes to elements like this, they are not toys anymore.Selling is simply to not become a pack rat, I don't need all 13.Quote from: Halcyon on April 17, 2023, 12:43:27 amVideo is an open topic at best for me. It's not the characterization en masse here, but I also share responsibility for not describing it too well since it was never that relevant.Quote from: Halcyon on April 17, 2023, 12:43:27 amI am keeping 2 x 2U units for this specific purpose, its a combined 6 slots, should be enough. The 1U also have a single slot. Anyone considering a home server, 1U looks sleek but is really quite limited with expandability.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 18, 2023, 05:26:24 am
content: Quote from: mapleLC on April 18, 2023, 01:43:37 amThe other consideration with 1U servers in they are generally noisier than their larger counterparts, particularly when the small cooling fans spin up to higher RPMs. If you're looking at a reasonably high performance server that relies on active cooling, but also want it to be quiet, go for the larger chassis with bigger fans.