atomicrabbit Posted March 11, 2014 Author Share Posted March 11, 2014 You do realize you need harddrives too right? That will blow your budget of 7-800 out of the water unless you go with a hp microserver...and even then you are looking at closer to 1000 if you fill it up with drives. maybe you can find something in the dell outlet site. There is an r510 for 1100 usd...def worth it IMO. Memory you can go up to 128GB, supports 8 hot swap drives..but it is the us outlet... it was a scratch/dent so it wasn't returned due to a malfunction it comes with the full 3 year warranty from time of your purchase. http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dfb&cs=28&puid=5bc25796 1) It's the US site. I live in Canada. Plus even if it was available in Canada, the price would be significantly more. 2) Link doesn't work 3) $7-800 for the server without harddrives Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ITOps Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 1) It's the US site. I live in Canada. Plus even if it was available in Canada, the price would be significantly more. 2) Link doesn't work 3) $7-800 for the server without harddrives Hi atomicrabbit, The following might be something that may fit into your budget (I would recommend specing it out on the site then calling Dell to get everything maxed out or things included that are not able to be added through the configurator). It is not the beefiest little box but it should be good for beginning and you can upgrade to something juicer down the road. The more powerful and most optimal Dual Quad Core with HT and above are normally used but would be out of your budget. http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-t20/pd Also when using the dell.ca site it appears to forward people to the us website. With that machine it appears to be a Single Quad Core with hyper threading so you would have 8 logical cores. You can upgrade the RAM to 32GBs if you fill it with all 8GB cards as it has 4 DIMM slots. It has built in Rapid Storage RAID (Software) you can get hardware RAID as an add-on Storage you can pop in 4 3.5 inch SATA drives and two more 2.5 SATA drives if you get an expansion kit with an optional controller card. The speed is 2x6Gbs and 2x3Gbs Power supply that comes with it is a 290W power supply. If you want more information you can check out the Technical Guide: http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/PowerEdge_T20_Technical_Guide.pdf Along with their spec sheet: http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/PowerEdge-T20-spec-sheet.pdf The downside to using the single core systems is your CPU could possibly max out before everything else. If it is just doing AD, file a media server and if you install Windows Server Core and use the Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services it may reduce CPU usage. I would also recommend getting the fastest drives you can get and watch the RAM usage so you do not have swapping going on. If you want to use some of the more advanced IO features you can use all SSD drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted March 11, 2014 Veteran Share Posted March 11, 2014 Link doesn't work because it is sold. 1st come, 1st serve and it was a good deal. You can get some good deals in the outlet if you look and are patient enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Warwagon MVC Posted March 11, 2014 MVC Share Posted March 11, 2014 How about getting a couple Intel NUCs? https://www.virten.net/2013/12/vmware-vsphere-homeserver-homelab-esxi-on-4th-gen-intel-nuc/ http://trainingrevolution.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/installing-vsphere-esxi-5-5-on-an-intel-nuc-d54250wyk/ http://www.techexams.net/forums/virtualization/97075-intel-nuc-vmware-lab-solution.html OMG ... they are sooooo cute!!! I want one! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindovermaster Moderator Posted March 11, 2014 Moderator Share Posted March 11, 2014 I got this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102050 Seems to work very well for me. Use it to host my minecraft server. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the-kevster Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 I've been running ESX servers for 6 years at home (sadly). I've always used HP desktops. The quality is brilliant as they're built to the same standards as their servers. I've had an EPC40, a couple of DC7700s, and now an 8200 Elite SFF which can take up-to 32GB of RAM. It'll run for the next 3+ years. You can pick them up cheap(er) on ebay with a year or so warranty left on them too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Squuiid Posted March 14, 2014 Share Posted March 14, 2014 I've been running ESX servers for 6 years at home (sadly). I've always used HP desktops. The quality is brilliant as they're built to the same standards as their servers. I've had an EPC40, a couple of DC7700s, and now an 8200 Elite SFF which can take up-to 32GB of RAM. It'll run for the next 3+ years. You can pick them up cheap(er) on ebay with a year or so warranty left on them too. Would you still buy HP now that they require support contracts for firmware updates? I would definitely not. Firmware updates are to fix hardware BUGS which should not have been there in the 1st place. Charging for fixes like these is a rip-off IMO. Stick with Dell/Lenovo Depicus 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Warwagon MVC Posted March 15, 2014 MVC Share Posted March 15, 2014 How about getting a couple Intel NUCs? https://www.virten.net/2013/12/vmware-vsphere-homeserver-homelab-esxi-on-4th-gen-intel-nuc/ http://trainingrevolution.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/installing-vsphere-esxi-5-5-on-an-intel-nuc-d54250wyk/ http://www.techexams.net/forums/virtualization/97075-intel-nuc-vmware-lab-solution.html Thank you for spending my money, I just bought 2 :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atomicrabbit Posted March 17, 2014 Author Share Posted March 17, 2014 I've been running ESX servers for 6 years at home (sadly). I've always used HP desktops. The quality is brilliant as they're built to the same standards as their servers. I've had an EPC40, a couple of DC7700s, and now an 8200 Elite SFF which can take up-to 32GB of RAM. It'll run for the next 3+ years. You can pick them up cheap(er) on ebay with a year or so warranty left on them too. I'm not specifically looking to get an HP because of the info that Squuiid mentioned about support contracts with HP, but I'm curious, what do you have in the 8200? i5/i7? How much RAM? What kind of HDD setup? And how much did you spend on it? I'm more interested in how much power I'll need to run a few VMs on an ESXi server. The intel NUCs are interesting, but buying multiple could get pricier than buying a single tower with decent specs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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