Which direction to go? Pre-Built or Self-Build?

[anodos]

It just means you're a "power user" :p

At least it's not NetBurst.

 

[Samuel Matthews]

As along as you guys support purchasing used hardware.

The hardware on your suggested hardware thread is very rare on eBay, from what the last two weeks of searching has to say anyway.... Time to start looking for suitable hardware myself i suppose. Is there anything else specific that a Motherboard should have in terms of capabilities and spec other than CPU support of anything after Nehalem, have Intel NIC or NIC's and Intel SATA controller?

 

[anodos]

As along as you guys support purchasing used hardware.

The hardware on your suggested hardware thread is very rare on eBay, from what the last two weeks of searching has to say anyway.... Time to start looking for suitable hardware myself i suppose. Is there anything else specific that a Motherboard should have in terms of capabilities and spec other than CPU support of anything after Nehalem, have Intel NIC or NIC's and Intel SATA controller?

If you're going with supermicro motherboards, you should look at X9 single-processor boards (which I believe will be sandy/ivybridge). Once you find something interesting post a link here and get some comments from the peanut gallery. When in doubt, consult intel spec sheets for chipsets and processors to make sure they both support ECC memory.

 

[Mirfster]

Avoid boards that have a Realtek NIC. Thinking that others mentioned that Marvell Controllers are "not so good". Check out the "Hardware recommendations (read this first)" thread for some good info (linked in my sig).

 

[Mirfster]

As along as you guys support purchasing used hardware.

Hmm, would have to check the FreeNas "warranty" on that... :p

 

[Samuel Matthews]

So pretty much what I stated in my last reply then, Intel NIC, preferably intel SATA controller, anything other than Marvell. As for the model, x9 onwards (Unless i wait around scouring eBay, an x10 may be cheaper than an x9 on eBay).

I have read the recommended hardware many times over and over and the parts listed there are proving pretty hard to get my hands on easily, mainly the motherboard.

Current hardware idea:

HDD's: Western Digital 2tb RED 24/7 x3
RAM: 8gb Samsung. not sure what model yet.
Case: For now I have an old desktop case that would hold it okay for a while until i get my final rack in, then ill be searching for a nice rack case.

 

[jgreco]

All my servers are using Intel Xeon 5500/5600 product family, which I believe is Westmere... Guess that just makes me "old school"... :(

Means your gear is "old crap."

 

[Mirfster]

Means your gear is "old crap." :)

Yeah, but so am I. Just you wait until I get the sound meter and show you all the 4 (soon to be 5 or 6) C2100/FS12-TY servers in my Dell 42U rack and how quite everything is. :p

 

[Samuel Matthews]

This may be a personal question that you don't wish to answer, which I wont mind if you don't. What do you guys have your servers and 'network gear' for at home? Do you have it all running in a live setup providing a service/use or is it there for 'tinker/messing' or just for the 'fun' of things to play with?

 

[Mirfster]

I work from home...

One Server is for ESXi
One Server is for MS Hyper-V running Windows Server 2012 R2 DataCenter
One Server is my FreeNas 9.3
One Server is currently testing/dev (not fully allocated yet) which has FreeNas 10 Alpha
I have two servers awaiting 2.5" hard drive trays and then I will need to spend a lot on getting 50 drives (2 drives as cold spares)
Oh, one of my servers is on loan to a client.... Which I should remind them about and get it back or sell it to them...

All are same make/model cuz I am a fanboy and will not be swayed from my legacy ways...

 

[Samuel Matthews]

Well that would make sense i suppose, what is your job line? Also what make are you a fanboy of then?

I love my ESXi server to bits. Its a very low powered box but i love it never the less!

 

[Mirfster]

Well that would make sense i suppose, what is your job line?

Been called a lot of titles Architect, Engineer, Tier III, Administrator, etc... I just prefer "geek".

Also what make are you a fanboy of then?

Dell PowerEdge C2100/FS12-TY 2U Servers... Cheap, old, quiet and pretty darn dependable (like me, 'cept for the dependable part..)

 

[Samuel Matthews]

Dell PowerEdge's - Perfect! Mine is a 1950, probably the lowest config you can get but by god is it my little baby when its turned on running ESXi!

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

What do you guys have your servers and 'network gear' for at home?

We work from home:

1. Onsite backups of 3 Macs & 1 Windows PC.
2. VirtualBox VMs for WordPress web development.
3. BTSync for file sharing that works onsite and offsite.
4. Media streaming when we're not working (Sonarr, SABnzbd, Plex).

 

[jgreco]

This may be a personal question that you don't wish to answer, which I wont mind if you don't. What do you guys have your servers and 'network gear' for at home? Do you have it all running in a live setup providing a service/use or is it there for 'tinker/messing' or just for the 'fun' of things to play with?

I run one of Milwaukee's oldest Internet services organizations. We basically consult on most things UNIX and Internet. Twenty years ago, we were helping to build Internet service providers. Ten years ago we were helping to build Usenet outsourcing companies. Today, things are a little slower but there's still a legacy infrastructure to maintain, plus technology is fun.

I prefer to keep our gear in the data center, which will be real interesting when one day a 747 from Dulles drops out of the sky on it. (I'm not really joking either, take a look at where Equinix DC3 is on a map).

However, it was getting costly maintaining multiple POP's about a decade ago, so I closed our Milwaukee POP and a lot of the gear ended up here in the office. That turned out to be really convenient in some ways. It made it easy to justify a 10GbE network, lots of storage, etc.

 

[Samuel Matthews]

@jgreco - Your story sounds pretty cool dude! I'm hoping to graduate University and either go into software development or networking. I've always been IT minded, I've been Microsoft certified for 5 years now and would like to venture into CISCO qualifications whether it be for work or pleasure is another thing all together haha. So I suppose it would be beneficial to me to spend the money on a pretty decent home network situation, either path I choose to go. It is not so much the cost of the equipment that bothers me (I mentioned cost issues in the original post), it is more the issue of living at home and my parents receiving the bills for the utilities here in the UK. Now, whether or not I subsidize my section of the bills, it still bother them when they receive a hefty figure on the account. This is the issue I face when I say that I may have an issue with having equipment like this on 24/7. And in my eyes, if I can't keep a NAS on 24/7 then I might as well either; not construct such equipment or just revert to a backup solution rather than a network storage solution.

I'm going to be doing a little more research into what CPU's, boards and RAM run at a lower power consumption to others.

If I do go through with building this, do you feel that it is still safe to purchase a motherboard with 1150 socket, will I find it hard to upgrade the CPU at a later date if I need too, or even struggle to sell my board later on down the line to upgrade maybe.

 

[JDCynical]

This may be a personal question that you don't wish to answer, which I wont mind if you don't. What do you guys have your servers and 'network gear' for at home? Do you have it all running in a live setup providing a service/use or is it there for 'tinker/messing' or just for the 'fun' of things to play with?

I'm a sysadmin for a business telecom provider, used to be in the NOC for said company (I've been here way too long).

My profile pic is an older pic of what is in my living room right now, containing the machines (physical and virtual) and managed switches needed to run a full domain with DNS/email/web, multiple subnets, VLANs', IPv6 tunnel, IDS, and hosting multiple SVN repositories for several community run game modification projects with an international user base.

(and to think it all started with a single pentium midtower sitting on my dining room floor...)

 

[Samuel Matthews]

Nice Justin! Sound pretty interesting to here why people have various setups at home like this. My enitial setup would hope to be a NAS, cisco router (or 2), a couple of Cisco switches (already have one) and a hardware firewall.

Do I snatch a used Supermicro MBD-X9SCM-F-O for £110 is the question here :o

 

[jgreco]

Resale value does tend to drop over time, and it isn't always rational. If you're truly paranoid, get the Skylake stuff that supports up to 64GB of RAM to reduce the likelihood that you will need to upgrade anytime soon. Otherwise, sit back and watch for a used deal on an X9SCM with an E3-1230 (or any other cheap option) being sold by someone who's "upgrading", because sometimes people don't realize that the speed of that old Sandy system is very similar to the speed of today's modern Skylake.

 

[Samuel Matthews]

Would a used X9SCM in what looks to be a good condition be worth £110? He has 16gb Kingston ram on there for £80 too, i've asked for a combined price, being cheeky. What is your verdict on the board price alone? This doesn't contain a CPU just to confirm.