Contemplating on buying a 2U Dell Rackmount Server off the old 'bay and wondered if anybody had any experience doing something similar? Looking to use it as a development server for to benchmark changes and track performance issues.
I don’t see why there would be any issues. I’ve got three HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 servers from eBay without issue thus far. I’d sell you one... but the shipping would be a killer.
The only challenge I’m going to make is that these will be big, noisy, and drink power. You might be better to look carefully at an i3-8100 which is quad core - real cores - 3.6ghz and available a bit over £100. Get the cheapest four RAM slot MATX motherboard you can find and a super compact case and you’ll have something that probably cost the same as the server but is tiny and barely uses any electric. The only downside is that you will be limited to a max of 64GB of ram, but that’s enough for most home server loads? You may even have some spare bits that would make this build trivial.
Here's an example, sans PSU, case, storage, with 16GB RAM - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/N6mHXP - max of 32GB in two slots with this one, coming in around £250. This build is the exact same, except the motherboard has four slots - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Vwj7KB- coming in around £25 more.
Personally... I'd say it depends whether you really need it to be rackmounted, and whether you need ECC memory or not (which will depend on the workloads you're going to be putting on it). If you really don't need it to be rackmounted then build up a standard ATX/mATX system with a normal case - as @Zoon suggested there are plenty of cheap ways of doing this. Many "standard" CPUs will support ECC memory, but compared to rackmount servers you do have fewer choices. One of the drawbacks of the cheap rackmount servers you find on ebay - besides the power consumption and the noise - is finding drive caddies. Often drives will be pulled from the servers still in their caddies before they're sold on to recycling companies; check the listings to see whether drive caddies are included or not. Finding drives can be cheap - depending on whether you want SSDs, SAS, SAS SSDs, etc or regular SATA rust spinners - but buying, for example, 6 caddies can soon mount up into a significant extra cost. And if you do want to actually put the thing in a rack then finding rail kits can also be expensive. I've got my eye on an HP DL160 G6 with 2x Xeon X5650 6-core HT CPUs and 48GB of RAM; the box itself is only £90 with free shipping, but compatible rails are going for £40-£60.
I use this rackmount case for my server, although it mounts on ears not on rails. https://www.scan.co.uk/products/log...-525-drive-bays-5x-pcie-slots-2x-front-usb-20
Truly headless operation (E.g. ILO, DRAC and so on) is the biggest bonus feature of of "real" servers, IMO. Aside from that, you find yourself limited to certain models of server boards from the likes of Supermicro which themselves can be quite expensive, even S/H.
Absolutely although this can be partially synthesized with TeamViewer, until they tag your personal account as commercial and insist you have to buy a license as just happened to me.
