hi guys, Time has come to upgrade my server at home as it's constantly running maxed out and makes everything else slow. I currently run a HP Micro server with 4gb RAM running Ubuntu Server I currently use my micro server as a samba server, VM server currently running 2 vm's, sab server as well as running Plex media server on it. i'm looking to up the vmware use for it to be able to handle some of the test machines i currently have on the main rig. So overall looking for something that is small in size IE Micro ATX and can handle 16gb+ RAM If anyone can recommend a Motherboard, CPU, RAM, PSU and possibly a quiet cooler. I've got a Case already in mind had a look previously but nothing recent.
IIRC for VMs you need a CPU that supports virtualisation. All of the K series (again I could be wrong but it's just going from memory) do not support it. That means on Intel I *think* you need to go 3770, 4770 or Xeon. However I do know that AMD support it on their Piledrivers, so I would go with something like this. http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-FX8320-...e=UTF8&qid=1396967859&sr=8-1&keywords=fx+8320 And this. http://www.amazon.co.uk/GIGABYTE-GA...1396967878&sr=8-2&keywords=gigabyte+am3++matx PSU this should do it, but I would look here at the sales section.. http://www.amazon.co.uk/EVGA-500W-P...UTF8&qid=1396967924&sr=8-2&keywords=evga+500w and ram you can use whatever kit you like. For the cooler.. Can you mount an AIO?
whats the AMD processors like these days? Haven't had one in years and the last 2 CPU's i had were intels.
Well you get 8 cores for not a lot of money. Think Magny Cours performance with much higher clocks. Very good for virtualisation and cheap for the performance.
Although you didn't mention any power requirements in your original post. I personally would avoid AMD for any machine running 24/7. Simply for the fact the idle power consumption is substantially higher. My E3 Xeon 1220v2 box will idle at 50w (with a bunch of disks/raid controller/10gbe), while my AMD FX6350 HTPC idles at around 70w (no disks just an additional bottom end graphics card). All modern mainstream CPUs support visualization these days, I can't recall any which don't. What many consumer CPUs don't support is hardware passthrough to VMs. This is known as VT-d on Intel and IOMMU on AMD. The Intel K model's do not support VT-d, but the S do. Pretty sure all Xeon chips do also, but not exactly cheap! What sort of budget are you looking at? You mention vmware, assuming you will be running ESXi? Test machines - are they CPU intensive? Does plex do any on the fly media encoding? How many HDDs do you need to support?
budget wise would be around 400 - 500 max. i've been running vmware workstation for a while, which i've not had any problems with the 2 machines i have currently on vmware are just winxp and linux / nagios i have windows server 2012 as well as windows 7 and 8 machines stuck on my main rig's vmware workstation which i currently use for testing. CPU intensive wise, my main machine doesn't have any problems with it and thats an I5 CPU I believe Plex does do some encoding. not sure how much as i run everything in HD where possible. It also does a lot of scanning to pick up new media. sab / couch potato and sick beard all do the same and are constantly checking for new items. HDD wise there is only the OS disk and 2 separate data disks. Everything else is externally connected.
Fairly decent budget for a home server! Personally I run ESXi hypervisor (it's free!) then run all my VMs on this. Have been very happy with my setup for well over a year now, if a VM crashes I can simply reboot it without anything else going down. I don't know if this would be a suitable solution for what your requirements are though, especially as this is your storage server. Does server 2012 have HyperV included? Alternative solution there. I would personally recommend having a proper server board, especially if going down the ESXi route (due to driver issues). Having IPMI comes in very handy if something goes wrong. Few suggestions: Latest gen xeon (looking at this board/CPU for my dads new server) Xeon E3 1220v3- £150 - http://www.scan.co.uk/products/inte...e-31ghz-base-35ghz-turbo-8mb-cache-80w-retail Supermicro X10SLL-F - £130 - http://www.scan.co.uk/products/supermicro-x10sll-f Memory im not too sure on this one, supermicro boards are quite picky. Probably going to be around £65 per 8GB Total ex case/psu: £400 Last gen xeon Xeon E3 1220v2 - £154 - http://www.scan.co.uk/products/inte...re-31ghz-8mb-smart-cache-31x-ratio-69w-retail Supermicro - X9SCM - £143 - (I have 2 of these!) - http://www.servercase.co.uk/shop/co...ntel/supermicro-x9scm-f-b-bulk-mbd-x9scm-f-b/ Kingston 8GB DDR3 - £63 - http://www.servercase.co.uk/shop/co...1333mhz-ddr3-ecc-240-pin-dimm-kvr1333d3e9s8g/ Total ex case/psu: £422 If you need a cheaper option you could simply get an i3/i5 such as http://www.scan.co.uk/products/inte...-33ghz-turbo-1100mhz-gpu-31x-ratio-84w-retail Don't really have many recommendations here as I generally don't buy this sort of kit A fairly cheap board which supports up to 32GB RAM, such as http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...a-raid-pcie-30-(x16)-d-sub-(vga)-dvi-d-hdmi-m 16GB of RAM is slightly cheaper than the ECC stuff, http://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb...-(1600)-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-10-10-10-27-xm I would suggest getting 8GB modules so you can expand easily in the future Total ex case/psu: £340 With the standard cooler included with the Xeon chips I have, I find the fan to be extremely quiet when idling! Not sure if linking to other forums is allowed, sorry if not But my overkill build can be found here if your interested http://forums.servethehome.com/inde...ld-vsphere-cluster-and-network-overhaul.1712/
thanks for that. I know these days you don't generally get a decent machine without spending some £££ i've got a lot of HDD's which as you can imagine cost a fair bit I'll have a look through and see whats what.
