Need major advice on server build

IMarsbar

IMarsbar

IMarsbar

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Hey,

A friend of mine is looking to build up a server to mainly host websites and games from. I have some experience with building normal gaming PC's but not touched a server. Having a quick look round it is not as easy as I expected.

At the moment he is looking at a Quad CPU Motherboard as have read you dont need to fill all slots as he wants plenty of room for improvement.

He is looking at getting the AMD's Opteron 6344 Processor's,
2 x 1TB Samsung 840 Evo's

Dont even know were to buy server grade stuff apart from amazon / ebay, had a look on OC but not much that i can see

Thanks
 
What sort of games? Will work out cheaper renting a server for the games than hardware + electricity etc same for the websites really
 
Money ain't to much of an issue for him, his budget is around £2,000 short term for Quad MB and 2 cpu's to start then add more cpus / ram next month.

He wants to make web development a career, Mostly plays MC, I know can get cheap servers but also wants to throw any game at it when he pleases.
 
Agree with nutcase_1uk - Quad socket is pointless overkill. Our ESXi boxes at work run between 20-40 machines on 2 x 6 core CPU's.

If you're planning on running multiple different workloads then I'd be looking at putting ESXi on it. That way tinkering with your game server won't take down the websites etc.
 
Cheap way would be one of the Dell Rx10 series, I'd be looking at the R710 and load it with memory and hex core LGA1366 cpus. If you could find an R720 in that budget, that would be better but I know they're still expensive as they're not that old really...

I have two Dell R310, an R410 and they're great rack mount units that have a lot of poke for the power consumption; for example 2 x quad core 2.53Ghz CPUs with 26GB ram is only consuming 90watts with VMs running.

The other option is to do a 'white box' build using supermicro parts from ebay. That may allow you to build a more powerful E5 series system for cheap but will mean putting it all together.
 
Quad socket is a terrible idea. Limits you in many significant ways, and is going to be terrible bang for buck (e.g. quad socket CPUs are the furthest behind the performance and power consumption curves, offer the lowest clock speeds, require rare and expensive motherboards, etc.)

2 or 3 single socket off-the shelf servers would be much better than a single quad socket. Something like the PowerEdge T110 II, or ML310 or any of the other small, quiet tower servers. You should be able to pick one up with 32GB RAM and a 3 year NBD warranty for around £600-800. I would even avoid dual socket systems unless there was a very specific need.

At work I look after around 1000 systems running on 99% dual-socket systems (70% virtual, 30% physical). There are an extremely tiny number of quad socket systems, and invariably they are ancient and more trouble than they are worth.

Not saying quad socket systems don't have their place, but it is primarily to support massive line-of-business databases that can't be split into a number of smaller systems.
 
Writing all that just made me realise: the day of quad socket systems is pretty much over. Compared to 5 years ago, I haven't seen the need for a single quad socket system in well over 3 years now. Dual socket systems are just so ridiculously powerful now, that the requirements lie elsewhere (RAM, storage, network). You can fit 768GB into a dual socket blade for crying out loud!!
 
Cheers for all the input, think that he will be going ahead with looking for a duel socket MB now. He has no problem with building it himself, prefers it to than just buying off shelf...as were is the fun in that :P
just need to fish through the amount of Server CPU's their are and find the best for use and budget
 
Having a look around, think may go for 2x AMD Opteron 6344 Abu Dhabi 2.6GHz CPU's. to go in a H8DGU-LN4F+ Supermicro Motherboard. then need to work out which RAM to get and storage, he is looking at getting a 3U case so allot of space for drives.
He also thinking of using it for video rendering
 
Just been discussing it with my friend and looking at that board over others is that it only has one pci-e slot, he plans on getting a RAID card so wont have any room for anything else....
Dont know what else you would put in them slots though tbh :P
other alternative would be the Asus KGPE-D16

both of these are quite old Motherboards though :/ surely their must be something more modern out??
 
- Self build will almost certainly be louder than an off the shelf tower server
- No overall warranty with self build, vs call a single number and a technician shows up and swaps out the part for Dell/HP/etc.
- With a purchased tower server you have guaranteed compatibility, everything has been extensively tested to work together
- Self build probably more expensive. I don't know how it works, but you can get crazy good deals on HP/Dell/others.
- AMD is a terrible choice (performance/bang for buck/choice of motherboards)

Self build is fun, but it's a few days tops, and then you have to live with it for the next several years. Given how cheap and good tower servers are these days, it's an absolute no brainer for me. Never go self build again.
 
Can see no logic in building it yourself even for the fun of it.

Buy a ready build server - ideal ex company clearance e.g. a HP DL380 G6 or G7 (if budget allows) - as a starting point a G6 can have 2x Quad core HT Xeons for 16 Threads to start with - G7's will do 6 core processors for a total of 24 threads.

- Standard kit allows easy / cheap replacement parts (e.g. Motherboards, Redundant PSUs, Raid Controllers, Hot swap drives)
- Better software included as standard e.g. for managing the RAID Cards (Hp's is leagues ahead of say an OEM LSI Logic), Email based alerts etc as standard e.g. when a drive, fan or psu fails.

DL380 G6 quick spec below - look at ebay for a rough idea of prices, but there are sites that specialise in refurb enterprise kit:
http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf.aspx/c04282582.pdf?ver=24

Bespoke will always work out more expensive than off the shelf
 
Armageus said:
Can see no logic in building it yourself even for the fun of it.

Buy a ready build server - ideal ex company clearance e.g. a HP DL380 G6 or G7 (if budget allows) - as a starting point a G6 can have 2x Quad core HT Xeons for 16 Threads to start with - G7's will do 6 core processors for a total of 24 threads.

- Standard kit allows easy / cheap replacement parts (e.g. Motherboards, Redundant PSUs, Raid Controllers, Hot swap drives)
- Better software included as standard e.g. for managing the RAID Cards (Hp's is leagues ahead of say an OEM LSI Logic), Email based alerts etc as standard e.g. when a drive, fan or psu fails.

DL380 G6 quick spec below - look at ebay for a rough idea of prices, but there are sites that specialise in refurb enterprise kit:
http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf.aspx/c04282582.pdf?ver=24

Bespoke will always work out more expensive than off the shelf
Click to expand...

Pretty much this with one exception. The Avoton and Xeon-D stuff is worthwhile spending for if you want super silent servers for lab stuff.
 
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