Soldato
Hi Chaps
Following a couple of recent BIOS updates from ASUS for the X399-A I've lost my RAID array twice in a month, I've got backups so its not the end of the world, but its highlighted that having one massive rig with everything in it is not necessarily the best plan...
I'm also planning on adding 2 more NVME drives into the current array I have in my main system, which I'm now pretty confident is going to destroy all my current arrays again - so enough is enough!
Have looked at all the currently available micro/mini tower servers from Dell, HPE, and Fujitsu and they all seem to offer quite poor upgrade options, don't have hotswap, and use lots of propitiatory connectors and form factors which is putting me off a bit, they cost from about £350 (G4400/4GB/No Disks) round to about £550 (E3 Xeon/8GB/1TB|2TB HDD).
Also looked long and hard at 4-5 Bay Synology and QNap's in the £500 range - these look awesome, but they are very expensive for the spec, and again limited upgrade options unless spending big money (would love a new Ryzen QNap - but they start at £1600!), I don't need the transode/media playing ability these offer either.
Anyway I'm thinking of ordering the below, but would appreciate any other thoughts or ideas before I hit the order button:
To this I'm going to add the following parts that I already have:
Will be running Centos 7 as the host OS which will manage the shares/backup duties, and 2 small VM's - one for GitLab CE and the other for Jenkins. I'm considering using FreeNAS - but I'm more at home on Linux than the BSDs.
Once budget allows in a couple of months I'm hoping to add a 10Gb NIC, and will also swap the 840 pro for a pair of 850 Evo's in a RAID mirror to give a bit more resilience and let me use the SSDs for caching.
Any ideas or thoughts on alternatives appreciated!
Cheers!
P.S Only thing I wont move on, system needs to be ECC capable, I know there's a huge amount of debate on this and the value of it in SOHO servers/storage solutions, but I'd rather have it than not, and yes I've read all the papers on it, trawled all the forums etc. the data on the array has a large amount of value to me and can't be easily replaced.
Following a couple of recent BIOS updates from ASUS for the X399-A I've lost my RAID array twice in a month, I've got backups so its not the end of the world, but its highlighted that having one massive rig with everything in it is not necessarily the best plan...
I'm also planning on adding 2 more NVME drives into the current array I have in my main system, which I'm now pretty confident is going to destroy all my current arrays again - so enough is enough!
Have looked at all the currently available micro/mini tower servers from Dell, HPE, and Fujitsu and they all seem to offer quite poor upgrade options, don't have hotswap, and use lots of propitiatory connectors and form factors which is putting me off a bit, they cost from about £350 (G4400/4GB/No Disks) round to about £550 (E3 Xeon/8GB/1TB|2TB HDD).
Also looked long and hard at 4-5 Bay Synology and QNap's in the £500 range - these look awesome, but they are very expensive for the spec, and again limited upgrade options unless spending big money (would love a new Ryzen QNap - but they start at £1600!), I don't need the transode/media playing ability these offer either.
Anyway I'm thinking of ordering the below, but would appreciate any other thoughts or ideas before I hit the order button:
- CPU: Intel Pentium G4560 3.5GHz (2c4t) - £45
- Mem: 1 x 8GB Kingston Value ECC 2400Mhz - £76
- Mobo: Asrock E3V5 WS (ATX) (http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/E3V5 WS/) - £107
- Chassis: Silverstone CS380 with 8 Hot Swap bays (http://silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=709&area=en) - £99
Total: £327
To this I'm going to add the following parts that I already have:
- Antec 620w HCG PSU
- Samsung 840 Pro (OS Drive)
- 4 x 4TB Toshiba X300 HDDs (from current system)
- Nvidia 630/710
- Intel Pro dual port NIC (E1G42ETBLK)
Will be running Centos 7 as the host OS which will manage the shares/backup duties, and 2 small VM's - one for GitLab CE and the other for Jenkins. I'm considering using FreeNAS - but I'm more at home on Linux than the BSDs.
Once budget allows in a couple of months I'm hoping to add a 10Gb NIC, and will also swap the 840 pro for a pair of 850 Evo's in a RAID mirror to give a bit more resilience and let me use the SSDs for caching.
Any ideas or thoughts on alternatives appreciated!
Cheers!
P.S Only thing I wont move on, system needs to be ECC capable, I know there's a huge amount of debate on this and the value of it in SOHO servers/storage solutions, but I'd rather have it than not, and yes I've read all the papers on it, trawled all the forums etc. the data on the array has a large amount of value to me and can't be easily replaced.
