HP Server

[zzglenn]

Hello,

I am looking for some advice on a HP server. I currently get a a nice discount (40%) where I work for HP equipment. I would like to purchase a good at home server for 3 purposes.

1) I need a virtual lab for testing ESX or Hyper-V, and would like something more than VMware workstation.

2) I need to store family data somewhere safe with some type of raid RAID (figured VM).

3) I also would like to stream TV and movies from the server to my TV (also VM). I already have a WDTV box for streaming.

Of course price is an issue, and I'm not 100% convinced I'm not just buying a large workstation called a server. Unless the server only supports 1 CPU is it worth looking at? Even after the HP purchase I will still need to add memory and disk. I will go with LF SATA as thats the cheapest. I was hoping to use RAID 10 with 4 drives possibly. Probably max out memory with non ECC.

The price I was hoping to stick too was betweek 500 and 800 before discount 40%. In the end though I'm not 100% convinced that I am saving money by not just building a nice desktop off of newegg for almost the same price.

Here is what I was orginally looking at.

http://shopping1.hp.com/is-bin/INTE...jt&CatalogCategoryID=LPoQ7EN6gasAAAEuIjMgPjqg

Thanks for any advice or help in advance.

 

[imagoon]

I built a more powerful machine than that server for about $700 from microcenter.

3750k + Asrock z77 with 32GB of RAM and 6TB of raw disk space. It is more than enough for my home lab atm.

 

[Talaii]

You're paying for the server hardware on that thing - if you don't need ECC memory or VT-d or the like, consumer-level hardware is generally more cost-effective (as the post above points out). The server probably also has better networking hardware than a consumer motherboard will - I don't know exactly which ethernet chip they are using, except that it's one of the intel ones. The intel network chips are much better than the Realtek and Broadcom ones used in most consumer motherboards. It also has the option for a remote management ethernet port, which lets you access the BIOS and console remotely (remote management inside the OS generally fails if the OS crashes, the dedicated remote management cards let you get around this).

There's no functional difference between server hardware and consumer hardware besides spending a whole heap more for more reliability. For something you are using at home, and can probably reboot from time to time if something goes wrong, I wouldn't spend the extra money. Especially don't spend extra money for a 2- or 4-socket "proper" server unless you really know you need the extra processing power - it's a lot of extra money. Instead, I'd get a basic board and a CPU that fits your need - an i5 should be more than enough, or a 3770 or 3770k if you really need the extra threads.

If you're planning on virtualising everything (especially passing all your disks through to a fileserver VM) you might want to consider getting a board and CPU that support VT-d. VT-d (or IOMMU in AMD space) means that you can pass hardware through to VM directly - the Guest OS sees it as native hardware connected to it directly. This makes I/O performance (especially disk performance) MUCH faster, but you need hardware the supports it. In intel space, this generally means either a Q67 or Q77 motherboard (or a server motherboard) and either a non-k 2600/3770, or certain i5 models (check the model number on ark.intel.com, some of the cheaper i5s don't, generally the higher-end models do, but the 2500k and 3570k don't). In AMD space it's a motherboard feature, but you'll have to do the research yourself to figure out which boards enable the feature.

tl;dr: The server gains you ECC memory, a Xeon CPU (generally considered more reliable) and better networking hardware; as well as the option for "proper" remote management. Consumer hardware will probably save you money - you don't really need remote management when you can reboot the server by hand if necessary; and the ECC memory/xeon are probably overkill for a home server. Just make sure you get hardware that supports VT-d if you want that feature, and a PCI/PCIe intel card wouldn't be a terrible investment if you care about network throughput.

If you really want to go cheap, I do parts 2 & 3 (software raid 5 in linux, can push ~80-100MB/s over the network) from a Celeron G530 in a random intel ITX board. This doesn't really stretch the processor at all - it's then used to build software for my Raspberry Pi (compiling on a 700MHz ARM11 is slow, the Sandy Bridge chip is much, MUCH faster) and other assorted tasks. That's $100 for a DH77EB plus $50 for the CPU, plus case (and a PCIe SATA card if you want more than 4 drives). Whether it would work so well if I was running the operating system in a VM is another matter; but pretty much any modern CPU is fast enough for a home server, unless you have a specific task in mind that needs a lot of CPU power.

 

[zzglenn]

Thank you both for the responses.

@Talaii Thanks for the explanation... I see exactly what you’re saying. I figured with the discount I might save myself a few dollars going with HP. The price of the server after discount seems to be around $300 then I would need to add disk and memory. From what you’re saying though is it seems I would be better off building a server from scratch, since the parts are fairly similar. In the case of CPU just make sure it supports virtualization. In regards to the RAID would it be better to get a SATA PCI controller card, or does the internal board controller work well enough? That was something additional on the HP server I was looking at as well.

@imagoon That is the type of server specs I was considering when I started this. Could you provide more information on what you used for a case and drives? Are you using RAID? Did you install a hypervisor or is it just a standard server?

Thanks,

 

[imagoon]

Thank you both for the responses.

@Talaii Thanks for the explanation... I see exactly what you’re saying. I figured with the discount I might save myself a few dollars going with HP. The price of the server after discount seems to be around $300 then I would need to add disk and memory. From what you’re saying though is it seems I would be better off building a server from scratch, since the parts are fairly similar. In the case of CPU just make sure it supports virtualization. In regards to the RAID would it be better to get a SATA PCI controller card, or does the internal board controller work well enough? That was something additional on the HP server I was looking at as well.

@imagoon That is the type of server specs I was considering when I started this. Could you provide more information on what you used for a case and drives? Are you using RAID? Did you install a hypervisor or is it just a standard server?

Thanks,

I used:

i5-3750k [the K part wasn't needed really, but it was on sale and when the lab is done, this may become my gaming rig by adding a video card]
32GB Corsair RAM
Antec 300 case
Corsair Power supply CX600 [way over kill actually]
Perc 6i + battery + cable set [ebay]
3 x 2TB WD Red Drives

I am running ESXi 5.0 on it at the moment. 5.1 upgrade will happen whenever I get motivated to do it.

Microcenter around here will price match the web and has sales. Even with tax they were cheaper than Amazon / Newegg.

Also, I am generally RAM constrained, followed by disk i/o. I rarely max the CPU. The machine is my test lab but also has my "NAS" and video streaming running inside it.

 

[zzglenn]

Sadly I don't have a Microcenter close to me

Did you go with the Perc 6i because it was better than the onboard option? Are you running a RAID 5 setup? How many VM's are you currently running or typically run? Are you using a VM for your NAS setup and streaming like openfiler, or something else?

Sorry for the questions, but your setup sounds exactly what I was looking for to help me study for the VCP along with providing the family some safety to documents, and stream the occasional show or movie.

 

[imagoon]

I have 15 VM's running right now. Perc6i just gave me better performance than on board is all. The NAS runs inside a VM yes.

edit:

to add more:

My NAS is a Windows 2008 R2 server that also has tversity and plex running on it. I can do full transcoding in the VM if needed. It also acts like my file server. Otherwise the VMs are setup using pfsense for network routers, simulated MPLS and 3 "countries" for everything to talk to each other.

 

[zzglenn]

Thanks a ton for the information imagoon. I hadn't even considered looking into other products for streaming yet. Also the pfSense and MPLS setup could be fun to configure. After doing a little shopping on newegg I can already see its going to be about the same price for the HP server I was looking at. So I will probably be going the build my own route.

Thanks again for the advice and if you have any other tips feel free to share

 

[stevech]

Or a small (2 drive) NAS from Synology or QNAP.
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/index.php
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com

 

[imagoon]

Or a small (2 drive) NAS from Synology or QNAP.
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/index.php
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com

Except he wants an ESXi host machine for VCP training.

 

[zzglenn]

@imagoon

How did you setup your drives? Did you do a JBOD or some sort of RAID?

Thanks!

 

[imagoon]

@imagoon

How did you setup your drives? Did you do a JBOD or some sort of RAID?

Thanks!

RAID 5. I also brought over the 3 x 1TB WD Blacks from another system so it has 2 x RAID5. ESXi I don't think has a graceful way of handling JBOD (Datastores on NFS is the closest but needs a whole storage system). Linux has for years, Windows 2012 just added an equivalent.

Also install ESXi on a 1GB+ USB stick. It is pointless to install it on the datastore.

 

[zzglenn]

Thanks for the information.

Quick question on the Perc 6i. Any reason you went with that controller? Are you able to plug all your drives into it with no problem? I would like to go the RAID 5 route as well, but not very knowledgeable on controller cards. I have only ever used the onboard controllers.

Is there a specific Perc card that you used?

Thanks again for the help.

 

[imagoon]

Thanks for the information.

Quick question on the Perc 6i. Any reason you went with that controller? Are you able to plug all your drives into it with no problem? I would like to go the RAID 5 route as well, but not very knowledgeable on controller cards. I have only ever used the onboard controllers.

Is there a specific Perc card that you used?

Thanks again for the help.

I had worked with them in many Dell R610 / R710 servers, and they generally "just worked" except for firmware bug that had been fixed. They are LSI based and all of the LSI tools "mostly" work with them. This allows me to access the cards and tell them to do things from the LSI tool, remotely. LSI offers an ESXi plugin to allow access to the card etc. This is something that a lot of the cheap cards don't do. (IE I can fire up the tool on my windows machine, connect to the LSI module in ESXi and add, remove drives, force a scan etc.) The pair I got were also dirt cheap on Ebay... You just need the proper cable and you can plug in 8 drives per card, and it also has an xor offload engine so it doesn't absorb CPU cycles for RAID functions.

They work fine for me. Biggest limitation on them is 2TB or less drives. There is no 3TB drive support for them. Oh well, when you get the pair with batteries for $80 you can't complain. "Perc 6i" is the model that I used.

 

[zzglenn]

Great thanks again for the information.

So something like this is what you picked up?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerE...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item416c97e2e0

 

[imagoon]

Yeah, you pull it from the bracket and it is a standard pci-e 8x slot. I bought at the store a bracket that matched it. You would need to get the sata cables for it. I got lucky, I think someone was doing what I did and got annoyed and sold the kit he bought cheap.

 

[zzglenn]

Yeah I will have to find some cables. Thanks for your help.

 

[SolMiester]

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[rsutoratosu]

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