(Part 2) Best computer servers according to redditors

Some ideas (highly contingent upon the angles you’re shooting and level of detail required):

Low detail: Build a rack-sized box, paint black, glue on some front panels such as https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Front-Bezel-PowerEdge-Server/dp/B00VRW998Y and throw some blinky LEDs behind.

More detail: pick up some empty server chassis, again blinky LEDs.

Grab some patch panels e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Mount-24-Port-Keystone/dp/B0072JVT02/ and put a bunch of short Ethernet cords between random ports.

You could create your own router that would do all of this with pfsense. https://pfsense.org

Could even be possibly done with hardware laying around.

Or a NUC that supports AES-NI https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B016VHBA7C/ref=psd_mlt_nbc_B01G62SBL0_rb

Or products created for pfsense https://www.netgate.com/appliances/pfsense-remote-offices.html

If you want to stay on Amazon, for a little bit more you can get this DL380 G6 which will be DDR3 and much better on power usage.

Edit:
The same seller also has
R610

DL380 G6

DL360 G6

Any of these would be a better choice than the G5.

MSP here. This a basic server that we've used for small biz that require AD and basic file sharing. It supports BIOS based RAID (you could also buy a RAID controller if you want it though). Just pick up 3 more 1TB drives, and you could run RAID 4. If you are JUST using it for authentication and basic file sharing, RAID 1 with a second drive would suffice.


Dell PowerEdge T30
https://www.amazon.com/Flagship-Dell-PowerEdge-Business-Quad-Core/dp/B07S4FXPNG/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=dell+server&qid=1575122681&sr=8-3


Windows 2019 Essentials
https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Server-2019-Essentials-2CPU/dp/B07JZ5L7NH/ref=sr_1_3?crid=QSTTKGUXAMLI&keywords=windows+2019+essentials&qid=1575122865&sprefix=windows+2019+ess%2Caps%2C220&sr=8-3

Have you considered an OEM microserver and an external NAS?

HP Proliant ML10 v2 | Xeon E3-1220v3 - $394.99

Synology DiskStation 4-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS416 - $449.99

I just bought an N54L to put FreeNAS on because they're on sale for $200.

Amazon link, sold by Tiger Direct

How many server racks are you looking to do, and what is your budget?

https://www.amazon.com/Frame-Adjustable-Network-Server-Enclosure/dp/B07JM29B4S/
$199 for the rack itself

Then find/make faceplates. If you find 2 or 3, make a silicone mold and cast copies (this is actually way easier than it sounds, and I can run you thru how to do so.) You will just go thru a bit of silicone, which can be expensive but its cheaper than buying a ton of faceplates

Drill holes for lights and Paint/customize as required

There's a nice margin on that quote:

$4,800 - 3xSYS-E300-9D-8CN8TP: https://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-Superserver-E300-9D-8CN8TP-D-2146NT-Networking/dp/B07JN5T2RT

3x4x32GB: I paid ~75/stick for DDR4 2400 RDIMMs on /r/homelabsales, so let's say $900.

$150 - 3x SATA DOM: https://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-SSD-DM016-SMCMVN1-Replaces-Model-SSD-DM016-PHI/dp/B01MXWJHG0/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=16gb+sata+do&qid=1573091872&s=electronics&sr=1-1

$850 - 3x P4801X (100GB): https://www.amazon.com/Intel-SSDPEL1K100GA01-Optane-P4801X-100GB/dp/B07MN6K549/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=P4801X+100gb&qid=1573091920&s=electronics&sr=1-1

$495 - 3x PM981 (1TB): https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-PM981-Polaris-Solid-MZVLB1T0HALR-00000/dp/B07BPYDNVJ/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=PM981+1tb&qid=1573091971&s=electronics&sr=1-1

Not sure what the HBA costs, but... that's < $6,500 USD for DIY unless I'm missing something... so ~30% less in USD pricing to put a few components in the chassis? I'd DIY.

The D-2146NT board is ludicrously expensive for 8 cores IMO, even from Amazon. You could significantly cut down on the cost by DIY'ing or going barebones with rackmount Xeons: https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16819117887. That's assuming you want to go new. If you don't need the newest of new tech for your homelab, there's more savings to be had by buying a sweet last or so gen server on these boards.

If you're OK with going down to Atoms, I have a homelab with C3758s (8 core Atoms) that's about half the price of the Xeon Ds: https://www.newegg.com/supermicro-sys-e300-9a-8cn10p-intel-atom-processor-c3758-8-cores-2-2-ghz-cpu-tdp-support-25w-fcbga/p/N82E16816139241?Description=c3758&cm_re=c3758-_-16-139-241-_-Product

Absolutely, check under used section.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B011NTZEZM?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_image

It really depends on what you want to do now and potentially later. You can buy...

1. an external HDD like the WD 10TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive for $206.98 USD and connect it to the laptop,
   
2. a consumer NAS like the Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218+ (Diskless) for $289.62 USD plus the cost of HDDs,
   
3. a PC that can take a couple of hard drives like the HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF i7-4770 3.40Ghz 16GB RAM 2TB HDD 240GB SSD Win 10 Pro (Renewed) for $315.99 USD plus a larger HDD,
   
4. something like the HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Ultra Quad-core 8GB DDR4 SDRAM Serial ATA/600 Controller Micro Tower Server Model P03698-S01 for $395.00 USD plus the cost of HDDs, or
   
5. any number of other options.
   
   Since you are familiar with Ubuntu, which is based on Debian, you should look into Proxmox VE, which is a Debian server with custom tools and a web UI for creating and managing Linux containers (LXCs) and kernel-based virtual machines (KVMs) and storage management. LXCs are similar to Docker containers except they behave more like virtual machines. Pre-built LXC containers including tons of web development frameworks like LAMP, Node.js, Drupal, Django etc. are available from TurnKey Linux for downloading and installing in minutes. Great fun!

I don't have an image currently as nothing is very organized yet and my server is in another room, but I've got a Dell Optiplex 790 desktop PC running as a pfsense, an Asus AC88U, Cyberpower 1500 UPS (for my desktop, pfsense, and router), then a refurbished HP ProLiant DL360 G7 that I bought a year ago that hosts most of my setup (running xenserver with 6 VM's): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GVP9P9J/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Honestly not sure if this counts as a homelab though.

(apologies if I didn't use the right terminology, this is my very first post/comment)

I was also looking at something like this. I'd be primarily using it as a hypervisor for Ubiquiti tools, PiHole, Linux stuff, etc. Also probably as a backbone for a NAS eventually and whatever else I throw into my lab.

To build, or not to build. That is the question.

It's hard to build your own and keep it under $300 unless you have some hardware laying around that you can use.

If you don't need hotswap bays then you could go super cheap. Try to find an early generation i7 or i5 desktop and stick it's guts into a big case with lots of room for internal drive bays. You won't have ECC and you will be limited on max memory. Many homelab storage servers start off this way. I'm guessing you will want a better setup than this since you already have an R710 and are looking at 10GB sfp+.

If you do want hotswap then it get's harder to build for super cheap. You could pick up a generic rackmount case with lots of drive bays (Maybe something like this?), then find a dual 55xx or E5-2600v1 motherboard/cpu combo on eBay. DDR3 is cheap on eBay if you buy 4GB or 8GB sticks. That's still probably getting into the $400 range unless you can find a case, or barebones kit, for real cheap on eBay.


That being said, I'd recommend you go the Buy route instead of Build.

I don't see a reason to build vs buy other than personal preference. If you want to build, then build. Sometimes I do that just because it's fun. Buying is probably the better choice because the R510 / DL180 are so cheap, and the hardware has been used by thousands of companies around the world. You know it's going to work. There are just so many out there for cheap.

The build you have is more of a gaming system without a gpu. On your note i would rather buy a dell r710 https://www.amazon.com/Virtualization-Dell-PowerEdge-Certified-Refurbished/dp/B01GW5S3I2/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1551068073&sr=8-5&keywords=dell+r710

if that doesnt have enough horsepower for you i would look into other dell poweredge products. Building a server isnt half as good as buying a prebuilt. It's a good experience but you dont get the bang for your buck

Here a dell r810 40 core all you need is better hdd's

https://goo.gl/P3ChD9

I purchased my iLo advanced license from here, and it's worked fine for the past 6 months. http://www.amazon.com/HP-ISS-512485-B21-iLO-incl/dp/B008J55PV2 you can ignore the 1yr nonsense on it, that's only for support, the actual features it enables are good indefinitely.

I have a Dell PowerEdge R710 with 2x X5660 processors. What do you think is a reasonable price to sell it for local pickup? Bought it for $1400 a month ago with very light use.

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-PowerEdge-R710-2-80GHz-Processors/dp/B00HLO44TQ

Look at something like this, swap the HDDs for something bigger if need be, run proxmox, ESXI, etc, and add in an ssd or two to run VMs, and install FreeNAS and pass the HDDs to it.

HP N54L + OmniOS booted from internal USB drive + napp-it. Use 16 GByte ECC memory if you can, but 8 GByte would do.

http://www.amazon.com/HP-744900-001-ProLiant-Micro-Server-PC3-12800E-11/dp/B00EN1BZL0/

Possible alternative, if you can get it at that price: http://www.amazon.de/Microserver-712317-421-BWWIN3-Celeron-G1610T/dp/B00DDIC1DA/

I will be hosting it on a dedicated server. Like I'm talking one of these These are my speed results.

Here is one like mine. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CLUIMGQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_iB1.BbFDC2EZA

I have to admit that the video card is one I just have lying around. GeForce 8600 GTS. After installing it, here is the output from the following commands.

$ ubuntu-drivers devices
== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:06.0/0000:17:00.0 ==
modalias : pci:v000010DEd00000400sv00003842sd0000C761bc03sc00i00
vendor : NVIDIA Corporation
model : G84 [GeForce 8600 GTS]
driver : nvidia-340 - distro non-free recommendeddriver : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin

$ lshw -numeric -c display
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: G84 [GeForce 8600 GTS] [10DE:400]
vendor: NVIDIA Corporation [10DE]
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:17:00.0
version: a1
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
resources: irq:19 memory:fd000000-fdffffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:fa000000-fbffffff ioport:5000(size=128) memory:c0000-dffff

I'd Just go out and buy a NAS. Some of them even have the same kind of processor as a pi so you can put custom firmware on them... or if you want four bays and essentially a laptop in a nice box, why not think about a microserver?

A quick thing before more server info.

I can see the WiFi plug's IP is 192.168.1.1 I'm not sure what the primary routers IP is will they just be the same?

Here's a picture for a more clarificaltion

Additional Server Info

I've never accessed my server remotely before The server is a HP proliant microserver g7 n54l It's currently running FreeNAS


Bonus info

So here the ultimate dream - The server is currently just for file storage. But I want to be able to stream video and music around my house. The XBOX I hope to have plex working on it one day so I can stream video to my TV.

A Raspberry Pi and some speakers will be used for audio. (Perhaps eventually an additional RasPi will replace the XBOX for video streaming)

And if I get also get remote access to my files I will feel like I have reached the self actualisation stage of Maslow's hierarchy of needs ^_^

Please keep pouring all your kind advice on me. It's truly appreciated! :)

For firmware, run the "Intelligent Provisioning" from the F10 menu during boot. That will bring your system up-to-date from a firmware perspective. You didn't specify the actual model of the server, though.

The machine is in warranty or very close to its end. You can check here:

http://h20564.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/wc/public/home

For the ILO license, you can pick up one for under $30 on Amazon. (Or be shady and Google for a key...)

He wants me to buy this thin client

Then get my licensing off of eBay. A quick search brings up this

And this server to host it on.