Radium Posted July 15, 2014 Share Posted July 15, 2014 Hello! I've been thinking about building a small server with enough power to route a gigabit WAN & small LAN, be a firewall as well as run small services (files, VPN, ftp) and a game server such as Minecraft or possibly Source DS (TF2). In the future and if I run more services such as dual WAN to spread the load by adding a NIC to the PCIe slot, to keep latency and throughput at good levels. I just want the ability or a sale argument when I either get tired of it or want to upgrade and sell this one. I want it to replace a managed switch that has VLAN tagging that's supplied by my ISP (I'm not locked to using their equipment) and my Draytek Vigor2920n router which doesn't have the full VLAN capability for me to route the VLAN through it, which is why I still have the supplied switch. The VLANs are used for VoIP and IPTV. I've looked into the Intel Avoton but I looked at Xeon E3 and they seem to be fairly priced. I want it to be mini-ITX, low noise and very stable. I have no rack frames at home. At the moment. :rofl: This is the hardware I'm looking into: 1x ASRock E3C226D2I C226 Socket 1150 mini-ITX server board (E3C226D2I) 1x Be Quiet SFX Power 2 PSU 300W (BN226) 1x Fractal Design Node 304 mini-ITX (FD-CA-NODE-304-BL) 1x Intel DC S3500 160GB SATA SSD MLC (SSDSC2BB160G401) 1x Intel Xeon E3-1240 v3 Quad core 3.4GHZ 8MB (BX80646E31240V3) 2x Kingston 8GB 1600MHZ DDR3 ECC CL11 DIMM (KVR16E11/8) This would cost me 9088 SEK wich is 1336 USD, 1434 CAD and 983 EUR. (tax and shipping is included) I looked into the ASRock C2750D4I but I won't be able to ever upgrade the CPU without changing the whole board, possibly forcing me to buy new RAM. It is, however cheaper, uses less power, has more cores instead of HyperThreading, more RAM slots and supports much more maximum RAM. The mobo+SOC combo is less expensive compared to mobo+CPU for Xeon. So the upgrade won't be too expensive. The C2750C4I has many more SATA ports, way more than I'll ever use. The 6 ports that the C226 board has and the 6 disks that fits into the chassi is more than enough. Xeon is a bit more expensive but I get more umph and raw power! Avoton is based on Atom but it has been improved a lot, such as out-of-order execution, a big chunk of cache compared to Atom and is 64-bit. I want an SSD that will last a long time, I don't intend to swamp it in writes but I want the possbility to write a lot to it for logging network, file server and run a game server. I also want it to run for long periods of time without crashes that come out of the blue and the CPU/chipset supports ECC so I suppose that it's a good choice to use ECC RAM. I don't use a lot of disk space, I don't collect media nor do I rip or download movies. I ran my current desktop with just 120 GB SSD for a few months and I had several big games installed. I couldn't find other server grade mobos, from reputable stores in Sweden, in mini-ITX format that has dual-NIC and lack sound. I want it to be a server! The boards contain a simple server graphics chip, I don't intend to run anything but command line or possibly a simple desktop on it. Preferably just SSH once the server is up and running. Both boards support IPMI. ASUS have "server" boards with dual NIC but they don't have IPMI support that's on when the board is off and the boards are larger as well as have a useless audio chip. I don't only need advice on the hardware but also what OS to run. :huh: I'm a somewhat avid Windows user but Windows isn't cheap. Could I use CentOS? Thank you for taking your time to read my post, Radium, Sweden. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sc302 Veteran Posted July 15, 2014 Veteran Share Posted July 15, 2014 buy a prebuilt server...the bottom one comes with a windows server os. For example. xendrome 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radium Posted July 15, 2014 Author Share Posted July 15, 2014 They are too large and have mechanical drives. The one with OS has single NIC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan~ Posted July 15, 2014 Share Posted July 15, 2014 SSD on a server? good luck, unless it's not going to be dealing with data Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radium Posted July 15, 2014 Author Share Posted July 15, 2014 SSD on a server? good luck, unless it's not going to be dealing with data I'm not going to store large amounts of data nor am I going to use my server for sharing files with hundreds of peoples or running databases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biohead Posted July 15, 2014 Share Posted July 15, 2014 Microserver G8? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xendrome Posted July 15, 2014 Share Posted July 15, 2014 http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/nuc/overview.html ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrikedOut Posted July 15, 2014 Share Posted July 15, 2014 Another vote for the HP Microserver. +John Teacake 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haggis Veteran Posted July 15, 2014 Veteran Share Posted July 15, 2014 yup same here, stick 16gb in it or 32gb in the latest one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radium Posted July 15, 2014 Author Share Posted July 15, 2014 Why should I buy a server from HP or any other such as Dell and Fujitsu instead of building my own that has everything I need? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian M. Veteran Posted July 15, 2014 Veteran Share Posted July 15, 2014 Why should I buy a server from HP or any other such as Dell and Fujitsu instead of building my own that has everything I need? The HP Microserver is very energy efficient - they're awesome little boxes (although obviously not great if you need to do something which is CPU hungry). I have a Microserver NL40 here which runs everything. It runs my network storage, home automation system, backups, VPN, DNS, web server, iTunes/media server, and even my CCTV - and it's been fantastic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radium Posted July 15, 2014 Author Share Posted July 15, 2014 The HP Microserver is very energy efficient - they're awesome little boxes (although obviously not great if you need to do something which is CPU hungry). I have a Microserver NL40 here which runs everything. It runs my network storage, home automation system, backups, VPN, DNS, web server, iTunes/media server, and even my CCTV - and it's been fantastic. But I intend to run a game server too, such as Minecraft or TF2 (Source DS), both of which need beefy CPU. What OS are you running? I looked into Linux iptables and it seems very flexible. I'm thinking of going down that route. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindovermaster Moderator Posted July 15, 2014 Moderator Share Posted July 15, 2014 I'm using an Intel i3 NICU to run my minecraft server, that is more Ram intensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biohead Posted July 17, 2014 Share Posted July 17, 2014 The CPU in the G8 will be capable of running that, but if you still have your doubts you can buy the entry level model and drop a Xeon E3 in there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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