Which small server?

R.C.Anderson

R.C.Anderson

R.C.Anderson

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I was originally looking at getting a 4-bay NAS, however when looking at the price of one compared to a small server, it seems like I would get more customizability & better performance at a lower cost.

Question is, what do I go for? I've noticed the HP Gen 8 Microserver, HP ML10 Server & Dell T20 server all have rebates on at the moment, making them ~125, 105 & 225 respectively.

From a look round the web, these all provide better performance than a NAS would (e.g. Synology 416play, which I was looking at), but at a much reduced price.

My main uses for this would be as a NAS, but acting as a Plex server & download station (I may add other things to it in the future as I tinker, but they're the main points). I'm looking at installing 4 data drives (plus a SSD boot drive), running in RAID (most likely 10)

Which device would I be best off looking at? Are there any important factors with any of them that I might have missed that would prevent me being able to use it as I wanted?

The OS I plan to use hasn't been decided yet either (as I've only really stated thinking about a server vs a NAS yesterday!), so any suggestions to look into would also be appreciated.
 
Microserver Gen8

- CPU's are limited due to passive cooling.
- You need a HBA to get RAID10 which means no more expansion.
- 16GB ram hard limit.
- Limited space for more drives from the added HBA.
+ ILo4

ML10
- No Ilo.
+ CPU list is better
+ Expansion options higher
+ 64GB Ram hard limit.
+ Can fit more drives in the case.

Dell (I'm not sure on, I'm a HP man myself but going off the threads here it's better than the Microserver.


Personally, ML10 or the T20

UNRaid or svr2016 and VM it. Plex works wonderful as a VM (just set auto logon or run it as a service and you can forget about it.)
 
+1 for UnRaid. It's simply fantastic. I have it running 2 VMs, including my main gaming PC, and multiple dockers including Plex Server, Crashplan, Couch Potato etc.
 
neodude said:
+1 for UnRaid. It's simply fantastic. I have it running 2 VMs, including my main gaming PC, and multiple dockers including Plex Server, Crashplan, Couch Potato etc.
Click to expand...

Can you clarify that. I'm reading that you do your gaming on a VM running on Unraid. If so, how did you go about this?
 
Bluecube said:
Can you clarify that. I'm reading that you do your gaming on a VM running on Unraid. If so, how did you go about this?
Click to expand...

Yep, my main PC runs as a VM within UnRaid. It has 4 cores dedicated to it and a USB3 card & GTX1070 passed through to it.

I went about it in much the same way as you install Windows 10 on a bare metal machine. Created the VM in the UnRaid VM manager, pointing it to the Windows10 ISO and selecting the 2 cards for pass through. After that it acts just the same as a real machine.
 
None that I notice.

There's an article comparing UnRaid VM gaming performance to bare metal Here

Also...


:)
 
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That's for the input guys (and no worries pulling it off topic a little, it's actually quite interesting to see how effective VMs are (as I've had very little experience with them)).

Seems like it's best to go for either the ML10 or T20, due to the added performance, I've just got to look into the difference between the two now to see which is better out of the two.
 
T20 runs ddr3 and has 32gb ram limit. Only 4 SATA ports, 4x 3.5 and 2x 2.5 bays.

I preferred the HP ML10 as it was the V1 so had 6 SATA and internal USB.

In the end I got the Dell as I wanted the Xeon CPU and it ended up being 220 after cash back with a free 1TB drive.

Could be difficult to get a better CPU down the line so my preference was to buy one up front.

You'll want at least 8gb in any of them, possibly 16gb. Will need to be ecc unbuffered to match or you can just use regular dram but can't mix the two.
 
I've ended up ordering the T20 because of the extra performance available for Plex.

Going to need to source some more RAM though. Any pointers as to the best stuff to get?
 
R.C.Anderson said:
I've ended up ordering the T20 because of the extra performance available for Plex.

Going to need to source some more RAM though. Any pointers as to the best stuff to get?
Click to expand...

You can easily had more sata ports and hdd ...check the T20 thread for info

This works with the shipped 4gb

Kingston KVR1333D3E9S/16RAM 16GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC CL9 DIMM, 240-Pin

I transferred this stuff from my HP micro server 54l to the T20 for a total of 20gb

I'm running 32GB now though.
 
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Slightly off topic but noticed a few people recommending unRaid, am I correct in saying it isnt free?

If so, any reason to pick this over something like ESXi which is free and doing the same PCIe passthough?
 
Unraid manages your storage to provide a NAS type experience which can run VM's + containers for other apps. The main benefit is that it's simpler to configure and use, designed more as a home appliance than an data centre tool.

Depends how much free time you have.

EXSi free has some limits, e.g. snapshots etc. which increases your workload if you want to backup the installs etc.

Personally I'm experimenting with XEN at the moment, but plan to experiment with unraid, freenas etc on my older hardware once I'm set up on XEN.
 
I can't comment on EXSi or XEN or anything else as I've never used them, but UnRaid just works. There's a cracking community forum full of knowledgeable people, some of whom make some very nice plugins and docker containers. Spend a bit of time over on the Limetech forums and you'll see what I mean, very much worth the cost of the software.
 
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