Server Hardware Recommendations
 

Planning to move from my old Server 2008 R2 & Exchange 2010 box at home to Server 2012 R2 & Exchange 2016. Current box will not support x64 architecture. I have typically salvaged my servers from retired boxes at work for low cost, but nothing right now that will meet my needs.

Looking for a box on the cheap--like pre-owned Dell or something--with small form factor to hide inside the media tower.

Minimum 16GB mem, but would prefer ability for 32GB. HDD can be 128GB (so SSD is ok). OS is irrelevant since I will wipe it clean and start over.

Any suggestions?

I have been using a cheap HP tower as a home server for a few years now.

If you want an actual server, Supermicro makes nice ones that aren't particularly spendy.

http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineS...=28&l=en&s=dfb

dell outlet is pretty good (refurb/scratch&dent), they often have discounts/coupons too

not sure what your specs are.. maybe look at NUC if small box is useful?

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/...major-upgrade/

You may want to look at a Intel NUC. I'm using a Intel NUC6i7KYK for my Plex home media server and am very happy with it.

This model uses a i7-6770HQ processor. I've maxed it out at 32GB of ram, and have it setup as RAID 1 with two 1TB M.2 SSDs.

If you go that route, you buy the NUC, and add in the OS, ram, and HDs. It's about the size of a paperback book and is fairly quiet.

If you don't need that much power Intel does make cheaper/less powerful NUCs.

Fairly certain Win 2008R2 only came in 64-bit editions.

Another place to look is off-lease servers on dellrefurbished.com . It is run by Dell Financial Services and typically features 2-4 year old equipment. They often have 50% off coupons so keep an eye out for them on deal sites.

That looks just about right! What was the total price point, if you don't mind divulging that?

$700 for NUC (i7 HQ) + ram + m.2 SSD

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/...omparison.html
http://www.intel.com/buy/us/en/catalog/components/nuc

different versions, DIY (aka add your own memory/hdd)

gigabyte/... has their own version
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=-1&isNodeId=1

probably way too many choices


just note that they don't have as much cooling/support/fallback/RAID as a typical server build

You are correct--been so long since I discovered the lack of h/w requirement in the rig for Server 2012...trying to initiate an install again now to get a reminder.

https://communities.intel.com/thread/51182

just note that there may be minor issues (like the ones above).. not good for a "production" server, but if you're willing to manually fix it on your own, sure

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/...oards+and+kits
NUC6i7KYK officially supports 2012 R2, so you get the drivers and everything


official rigs (sold by Dell, or parts like Supermicro) have their own certification process for Server 12/R2

That is right. The last 32-bit Windows Server was the Vista based 2008. The Windows 7 based 2008 R2 is 64-bit only.

I got it from Newegg. The total for everything (except the OS) was 1247.55

It broke down as:
Intel NUC NUC6i7KYK 649.99
2 Kingston Value Ram 16GB 260pin DDR4 SO-DIMM 117.98
2 Sandisk SD8SN8U 1TB m.2 SSD - 479.58

Can I ask why you need/desire to run an Exchange server out of your home?

I used to do it too, but with cloud Exchange running a total of $10/month for the two mailboxes I needed, it is much cheaper than hardware + electricity + licensing... if you're licensing Server 2012 R2 and Exchange properly, the cost of those alone exceeds $1k.

Started a long time ago, when I used it as a lab environment for the most part. Then moved into it personally, started hosting other services for various functions I needed/wanted, and it stuck. I am ok with the cost when I control the entire environment from AD to IIS to VPN to Exchange, etc.

I long since moved on from netadmin stuff, but I still tinker.

For less than $500 you can find dual E5-2670 1U or 2U servers on eBay. Very very hard to find a better value. http://www.ebay.com/itm/ZT-2U-Storag...-/152186550866 this thing even has an LSI RAID controller in it! Or http://www.ebay.com/itm/1U-Rackmount...UAAOSwzJ5XYegy this one still under $500 comes with an SSD to boot. Hope you have a basement to hide it though because these are loud.

That price point is good, but noise is an issue as I need to be able to tuck it into (preferable) or behind the media tower.

I think I will go with the NUC6i7KYK. Wife works for Intel and it appears their discount prices it at $476.

Thanks all!!

Also these rack servers have SFP network connectors in lieu of the more common RJ45. Pretty tempted to pick one up for a virtualization server.

(My original reply below this one)
Unless someone else pays your electric bill, the difference between one of those (~700-1000 watts full blast, probably close to 100W idle and easily 200W at light load) and the NUCs (65W for the i3/i5, 120W for the i7 skull canyon at full blast, but a lot of that with is extra watts in case you need them for external USB or Firewire devices -- RAM + SSD + CPU can't really exceed ~70W on that one, or ~45W on the dual cores, even at full blast, and idle loads are going to be ~10W maybe less depending on the efficiency of the RAM and SSD -- idle for the CPU is just a watt or two.)

It's a great choice if your budget allows for it; the only merit of the i3 I suggested instead is being cheaper, and maybe a little less electric used.

Ditto the much larger SSD -- there's no such thing as too much disk space. :D

I wouldn't cheap out on the small form factor stuff; they tend to run hot and you don't know how they've been abused or not.

The NUCs are almost exactly what you want. Low power, fast, the newer ones Broadwell or Skylake will go to 32gb. I'd suggest getting at least a 240GB SSD, the cost difference between 120-128gb and the 240-256gb models is tiny with some decent ones of the latter down as low as $69.

For server use, you might also consider putting two smaller SSDs in to RAID them in case one fails.

If your old model is old enough that it doesn't even support 64-bit OSes, you could probably get away with the cheapest non-Core-i models but they won't make the RAM limit. The older Haswell (i3/i5/i7-4xxx series) ones top out at 16GB.

The current generation i3 one is the most affordable new one that meets your needs:
http://ark.intel.com/products/89189/...-Kit-NUC6i3SYH
http://amzn.to/2avxz6D

32GB of memory for the above: http://amzn.to/2aRmjEd
(The broadwell ones would be DDR3L)

Here's my preferred low-priced SSD; it's an odd size (275gb):
http://amzn.to/2aZZH7g for 2.5"
and http://amzn.to/2aXFrC4 for M.2 (it has one slot for each.)

If you wanted to use it as a storage server, you could also put in the 275gb M.2 drive as a boot/apps drive and then a 2TB 2.5" spinning drive (the largest that will fit, I think; there are 3TB and 4TB ones now but as far as I know they are all the thicker 15MM height.

Assuming you're only going with one SSD, you're under $500 before tax, probably just over with it. Not going to do any better new, and I've never seen a really good source for used USFF machines. Even if you did, used and refurb are likely to be Haswell with the 16GB limit.

2012 i7 Mac Mini - can be had for reasonablish prices on eBay etc.?

I've got one running VMWare ESXi, needed something SFF and quiet to sit on the bookcase at home. Looked at using NUCs, building ITX box etc., but they were more expensive for what I needed.

If I had a bit more space might have got the HP Microserver route and upgraded the CPU

Andy

Closing the loop here...in case anyone else is interested or finds it useful...finally pulled the trigger on following:
- $476: NUC6i7KYK
- $202: Crucial 32GB Kit (16GBx2) DDR4 2133 MT/s (PC4-17000) SODIMM
- $629: Samsung 960 PRO Series - 1TB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6P1T0BW)

Yeah, the drive was a bit over top from what I had originally wanted, but my jaw dropped when I saw the read/write speeds on the new 960 Pro.

Whole kit should be here late next week for the fun part of build out, OS/app/service load, and performance testing. Should also give me a few more available minutes on my UPS since I'll be replacing two other servers with this device.

You might want to watch the temperatures on the NVMe drive on that via SMART, or look at whether there's any way to get a heat sink on the controller chip for the NVMe card.

The NVMe drives all tend to run hot under load and the airflow in the NUC boxes is not super (although I don't have any hands-on experience with the skulltrail one and the bigger CPU fan on that may end up pulling air across the SSD as well)

There is probably some case hacking you can do if it turns out to be hot enough to cause throttling. Other than the thermals on the drive, looks like a superb setup, and as long as you can keep that bad boy cool you should be extremely pleased with the performance of the NVMe drive relative to a cheaper SATA one.

Good tip on the heat! I'll keep an eye on it. For the most part, the drive likely won't be under intense load often; just occasionally.

I have little doubt right now the best price/performance is http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-HP-MP9-G...oAAOSwImRYG-zD this auction.

Skylake quad core i5, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD for 325 bucks -- the motherboard, the chassis and the power is almost free at that price.

As for people praising NVMe: you will realize that in real life desktop usage NVMe provides next to none advantage to a SATA drive. Benchmarks, sure, but nothing that you'd actually feel.

That's an extremely good deal on a compact system, and as POS hardware it should be capable of running for a long while.

Dell has had some very good deals (around $400 with a Skylake Xeon, E3-1220v5 I think) on refurbished T130 servers via the outlet; not nearly as compact, but a great deal more expandable. Might be more appealing to some.

In my experiece NVMe makes a big difference in a limited range of development tasks; indexing or searching a huge number of files is much faster, and "find me all the instances other teams have used a piece of my code" IS a day to day task.

In server use, the IOPS make a much bigger difference than the sequential throughput, and for CI or mail or DB servers, it can be a game changer (although it's wicked expensive there.)

For a home server, well, it's not that much more expensive although I'd have spent the difference on capacity instead. My home server is still mostly disks (60TB raw disk with 45TiB usable; 2.56TB SSD with 1.2TiB usable.) One of these days, I'll probably rebuild it with SSD cache in front of the disks, but in the short run it does just fine with the OS and a few other performance-sensitive bits on the SSDs and all the media and backup files on spinning rust.