VM Server to replace Azure hosted VM's

cables

cables

cables

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22 Apr 2004
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I wanted share the specs of my recent purchase.

My goal is for a small machine that could sit on my desk and replace my Azure VM's. It should pay for it's self anywhere from 1-3 years, it's an expensive experiment, and I could have replaced my existing VM's more cheaply - but I wanted some extra capacity in the system.

In Azure I'm running one massive dev server with around 28GB ram one core with four logical processors at 2.1GHz. I run SQL, SharePoint, K2, Visual Studio, Active Directory, and a ton of other server software. I probably should distribute all of this, so I'm thinking about 3-4 VM's by role (AD, SQL, SP + DEV, K2 + DEV), but initially I'll just move my current VM onto this server.

Here's what I've ordered (minus a Raijintek Triton AIO - that was out of stock at ocuk).

Corsair Vengeance Pro Red 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz ....(two sets of 32 ordered)
Quad/Dual Channel Memory Kit (CMY32GX3M4A2400C11R)
Intel Xeon E5-2620v2 2.10GHz 6-Core with Hyperthreading & Turbo (Socket 2011) - Retail
Asus P9X79 WS Intel X79 (Socket 2011) DDR3 Motherboard
Samsung 500GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE500BW)
SuperFlower Leadex Platinum 1000W Fully Modular "80 Plus Platinum" Power Supply - Black
Corsair Carbide Series Air 240 High Airflow PC Case - Black (CC-9011070-WW)
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (probably got some of this somewhere)
 
If you dont want to change the case then there is a X99 mATX board, but then you have to buy DDR4 RAM and a suitable Xeon CPU (socket 2011-3)

YOUR BASKET
1 x TeamGroup Elite 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black (TPKD432GM2400HC16QC01) £359.99
1 x Intel Xeon E5-2620 v3 2.4GHz 6-Core with Hyperthreading (Socket 2011-3) - Retail £335.99
1 x EVGA X99 Micro Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 Micro ATX Motherboard £199.99
Total : £905.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).




Also neither X79 or X99 have any IGP, so you need some sort of gfx card to get a picture.
 
cables said:
Dimensions 397mm x 260mm x 320mm (L x W x H)
vs
12 inch x 10.5 inch ( 30.48 cm x 26.67 cm )

Why wouldn't it?.
Click to expand...

Because the case takes mATX maximum.

It doesnt even have the expansion slots for the board, the case has 4 expansion slots and the board has 7

Do you own a hacksaw or Dremel?
 
I do, but I'll have to see this in person before I'll know what to do.

Either saw off the end of the mobo, or cut a slot in the case. I don't need the expansion slots, so probably the former.
 
I'm interested to see how this pans out.

I recently built an AMD ESXi box. The FX CPUs are surprisingly good for this purpose, with the 8 cores and support for PCI pass-through on a 990FX board.
 
cables said:
I do, but I'll have to see this in person before I'll know what to do.

Either saw off the end of the mobo, or cut a slot in the case. I don't need the expansion slots, so probably the former.
Click to expand...

Yes, cutting the board off will be the easiest, cutting a case is difficult!
Also please post back pictures.
 
Parts arrived today, but as stated by Stulid the board does not fit the case... sort of.

Long story short, I think my best bet is to either, change the case, or change the mobo. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?


I love the case, but I don't really want to change memory, processor and board either.

It would be possible to fit the mobo in this case if I rotated it 90 degrees, but there would be about 1mm between the mobo and the front fans after fitting a rad, plus I'd have to hack the case, and possibly ruin the aesthetic, but this is meant to be a server so I don't really need to look at it, so maybe I should just get something a little bigger.

If I did rotate the mobo the back plate would effectively be on the top of the case. I'd also need to cut out some of the grill on the case top to access these ports and I would need to tap new holes to mount the mobo. As I mentioned before I'm not planning using the expansion slots, so I'm not so worried about these. Rotating is not as mad as it sounds as it wouldn't take much to cut the case as the metal is super thin at the top of the case over the mobo enclosure.

Suggestions welcome.
 
Cutting the bottom three slots off the motherboard is a solid choice.

I'd change the case for one large enough to hold the Asus board.
 
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Did you have any redundancy on Azure? The build sounds good, but if you were paying cloud prices before I'd hope you were getting resilience you wouldn't have with one dedicated machine elsewhere.

Otherwise renting a dedicated server in a European datacentre and installing the software would've been my suggestion - anyhow it'll be interesting to see what the average power usage of the system is.
 
After shopping around and considering my options I finally went for the exact kit recommended by Stulid.

Quite painful getting an RMA number out of Overclockers though, so not really impressed with this element of the service.
 
cables said:
Quite painful getting an RMA number out of Overclockers though, so not really impressed with this element of the service.
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear that. Apart from the difficulty finding where to get a RMA number on this site, my experience has been really good.
 
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