ex-lease server for home lab

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sudo

389 posts

Ultimate Geek

#293063 25-Dec-2021 15:17

Has anyone recently looked at ex-lease server hardware to use as a home server system?

I would like to have a more powerful system, in both CPU (at least ten cores) and memory (128GB+) at home, that I can deploy and test virtual clustering environments (probably use proxmox).

Going to initially set a budget of 2K

Trying to figure out the best bang for your buck, decent performance, and not produce the heat and sound like a jet engine (I used to have an old DL380 like that)

On the lower price end of the scale there is a lot of servers available using Sandy Bridge/DDR3 chipset. I can add a ton of memory and some decent SSD/NVME capacity. But I think they will run hotter/noisier and chew up a lot of power.

Then you move up to later releases of servers using DDR3 (Haswell etc), which you pay more for but seem more energy efficient. It's gonna be a challenge to put enough RAM/storage to make a decent lab rig.

And finally, DDR4 systems (Broadwell/Skylake) which tick the box in performance/power efficiency. But for my budget, I'm not likely going to add much more than the sticker price.

My current lab consists of a i7 laptop running a bunch of VMs, and a Synology DS920+ with containers. It's worked for me so far, but I need to juggle resources to get one environment running.

If you have specific chipsets/models, that would fit (or others to avoid) that would be appreciated.

danfaulknor

928 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

Prodigi

#2838294 25-Dec-2021 16:03

Todd is your man. I run my business on a stack of servers from him

https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/search?member_listing=2471975

they/them

Prodigi - Optimised IT Solutions
WebOps/DevOps, Managed IT, Hosting and Internet/WAN.

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danfaulknor

928 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

Prodigi

#2838295 25-Dec-2021 16:06

@Toddy47

they/them

Prodigi - Optimised IT Solutions
WebOps/DevOps, Managed IT, Hosting and Internet/WAN.

mattenz

190 posts

Master Geek

#2838296 25-Dec-2021 16:11

danfaulknor: Todd is your man. I run my business on a stack of servers from him

https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/search?member_listing=2471975

I've had gear from him as well, probably more patient with advice than I deserved haha.

Toddy47

23 posts

Geek

#2838355 25-Dec-2021 17:15

Thanks for the mention Dan.

I am happy to have a chat about options and what might suit you, but what you've stated is easily doable for under $2k, it's when you start trying to get picky on specifics where things become to get expensive or involve waiting around for stock to come up with those requirements.

For example if you didn't need 3.5" hard drives as a requirement, then something like a 1U Dell R630 with 2x 14-core processors and 128GB DDR4 ram would come in around $1800. Something with less powerful CPUs of the same age with 128GB ram would be around $1600 mark. 3.5" based storage units generally cost a bit more and are less plentiful.

But that is where you would need to decide whether the jump to DDR4 is worth your while, a DL380 Gen8 with dual 8-core processors and 128GB DDR3 ram would be just under half that price.

Generally speaking the newer the server, the quieter it is, I wouldn't recommend running a server somewhere where you'll notice the noise (or set yourself up with that expectation), the good thing about integrated management modules is you can chuck a server in a closet somewhere and not worry about the noise and still have full access to the server itself. The Sandy Bridge era and newer servers are where they shifted more to better power efficiency and started caring about the overall noise, so a general rule is anything that era or newer is pretty quiet. The lower end models can be the exception to that rule however.

I am obviously biased, but I can't see you better a well-priced server bang for buck and it's what I use for most solutions.

SomeoneSomewhere

1748 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#2838379 25-Dec-2021 19:16

In the server space, Haswell & Broadwell are DDR4 platforms. That pushes the price up a bit because DDR3 RDIMMs are very cheap second hand.

Other questions to ask yourself are what drive layout you want - is this something to cram as many 3.5" drives in as possible for cheap storage, or do you want SSDs?

I believe tower servers tend to be quietest, followed by 2U, and 1U just screams.

This looks fairly nice as a starting point: https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/marketplace/computers/servers/servers/listing/3400415060

sudo

389 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2838455 25-Dec-2021 23:43

Toddy47:

I am happy to have a chat about options and what might suit you, but what you've stated is easily doable for under $2k, it's when you start trying to get picky on specifics where things become to get expensive or involve waiting around for stock to come up with those requirements.

For example if you didn't need 3.5" hard drives as a requirement, then something like a 1U Dell R630 with 2x 14-core processors and 128GB DDR4 ram would come in around $1800. Something with less powerful CPUs of the same age with 128GB ram would be around $1600 mark. 3.5" based storage units generally cost a bit more and are less plentiful.

But that is where you would need to decide whether the jump to DDR4 is worth your while, a DL380 Gen8 with dual 8-core processors and 128GB DDR3 ram would be just under half that price.

Generally speaking the newer the server, the quieter it is, I wouldn't recommend running a server somewhere where you'll notice the noise (or set yourself up with that expectation), the good thing about integrated management modules is you can chuck a server in a closet somewhere and not worry about the noise and still have full access to the server itself. The Sandy Bridge era and newer servers are where they shifted more to better power efficiency and started caring about the overall noise, so a general rule is anything that era or newer is pretty quiet. The lower end models can be the exception to that rule however.

I am obviously biased, but I can't see you better a well-priced server bang for buck and it's what I use for most solutions.

That 1U Dell looks interesting.

My concern for DDR3 is because the DL380 I had was a SDRAM model.

It was useful for a couple years. But in hindsight I should have paid the extra to get the DDR model (it also introduced the XEON proc)

Not sure how much functional difference between the Sandy Bridge (DDR3) and Broadwell/Skylake (DDR4). .. thats what I wanted to flesh out.

TDP's don't change much between generations ... so at least thermally/power draw Im not sure it's much of a difference.

mattenz

190 posts

Master Geek

#2838468 26-Dec-2021 08:36

I think most home users go for DDR3 models, because it's a lot cheaper.

PANiCnz

984 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2838492 26-Dec-2021 09:05

danfaulknor:

Todd is your man. I run my business on a stack of servers from him

https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/search?member_listing=2471975

One of my favorite TradeMe sellers, have bought a few things from him recently, all good quality stuff that's reasonably priced. Have daily notification from TradeMe of New listings from darkwraith.tk.

Ge0rge

2019 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2838497 26-Dec-2021 09:19

PANiCnz:
Have daily notification from TradeMe of New listings from darkwraith.tk.

Likewise!

Toddy47

23 posts

Geek

#2838529 26-Dec-2021 10:59

sudo:

Toddy47:

I am happy to have a chat about options and what might suit you, but what you've stated is easily doable for under $2k, it's when you start trying to get picky on specifics where things become to get expensive or involve waiting around for stock to come up with those requirements.

For example if you didn't need 3.5" hard drives as a requirement, then something like a 1U Dell R630 with 2x 14-core processors and 128GB DDR4 ram would come in around $1800. Something with less powerful CPUs of the same age with 128GB ram would be around $1600 mark. 3.5" based storage units generally cost a bit more and are less plentiful.

But that is where you would need to decide whether the jump to DDR4 is worth your while, a DL380 Gen8 with dual 8-core processors and 128GB DDR3 ram would be just under half that price.

Generally speaking the newer the server, the quieter it is, I wouldn't recommend running a server somewhere where you'll notice the noise (or set yourself up with that expectation), the good thing about integrated management modules is you can chuck a server in a closet somewhere and not worry about the noise and still have full access to the server itself. The Sandy Bridge era and newer servers are where they shifted more to better power efficiency and started caring about the overall noise, so a general rule is anything that era or newer is pretty quiet. The lower end models can be the exception to that rule however.

I am obviously biased, but I can't see you better a well-priced server bang for buck and it's what I use for most solutions.

That 1U Dell looks interesting.

My concern for DDR3 is because the DL380 I had was a SDRAM model.

It was useful for a couple years. But in hindsight I should have paid the extra to get the DDR model (it also introduced the XEON proc)

Not sure how much functional difference between the Sandy Bridge (DDR3) and Broadwell/Skylake (DDR4). .. thats what I wanted to flesh out.

TDP's don't change much between generations ... so at least thermally/power draw Im not sure it's much of a difference.

A DL380 Gen8 set on the acoustics settings is pretty quiet, most of the time the most noticeable sound is the hard drives being accessed, but there are definitely higher pitch noises which catch a few people out.

The biggest difference between the DDR3 and DDR4 systems nowadays is age and out of the box compatibility (for example VMware on an older machine you may need to install 6.0 then upgrade to get to 7.0). There are still plenty of businesses running 1st gen DDR3 systems without hitting any major roadblocks, and they are still very reliable and spare parts are pretty cheap.

Despite being similar TDP, the newer systems are much more power wary, so running 100% it may use a similar amount of power as the older machines, but idling or at lower loads, you may find they use 20%+ less and at 100% load the overall performance would be 20% better or realistically whatever the difference in overall performance between the processors generation-wise.

If you are trying to find a reason to go for DDR4 over DDR3 and life expectancy isn't really the issue for you and you plan to upgrade again in 2-3 years, then DDR3 is likely the way to go.