Reasons Against a Refurbished Server for This?
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One of our sites has a need to have a server at their site. This is a company co-owned by our owner and a 3rd party. Due to this fact, it was decided the best idea would be to have a server on site and not at the corporate HQ. The business in question makes safety grating.
As far as needs go, we're talking nothing more than a file server right now (for about 10-15 users). The users there have been wanting something for quite a while. I honestly do not see this being more than 200 GB of storage. They have needed a file server for a while now so we can get rid of the shares on individual user machines and centralize a bit. They will store spreadsheets, PDFs, CAD files, and solid models on the server. But, at this facility, they have recently purchased new machinery that will require offline programming software. At our HQ, we have had great success virtualizing this applications on ESXi, plugging the USB HASP into the host, and passing it back to the VM. Getting a host will certainly give capacity for that need.
We'll go with VSphere Essentials and a license of Veeam Essentials since this is a co-owned venture. I realize HyperV is an option, but it's not one I care to explore at this time. I'm looking at a Dell PowerEdge R610 with Intel E5520 procs, probably around 32 GB of RAM (plan for growth), and then either 6 300GB 10K SAS drives in OBR10 or 6 300GB 7200 RPM drives in OBR10 (not sure yet). We'll go with either a dual or quad port NIC. With XByte, you get 3 year NBD parts warranty, which I think would be good enough.
When I asked the COO (COO of all companies in our corporate family) about the cost of downtime, he basically said it would not hurt them much because they could still access our ERP system here at HQ, e-mail, and our company intranet. He did not think it would stop production. At that point I thought to myself, "then why spend money on a server?" If they start storing part programs for offline programming and drawings on that server, it will have much more of a cost associated. According to my boss (very involved in operations), as long as the most critical files can be restored within 4-8 hours, we are fine.
We'd get a license of Server 2012 R2 Standard to get the license to run two VMs, and we could make one of them the Veeam server or just leave Veeam running on a workstation if we wanted to separate it from the host. With Veeam on a box separate from this host, we would run local backups to some type of NAS (maybe a Drobo 5N or something like that) and either replicate to a host at HQ (would be ok for a while but depends on storage usage), replicate to some storage provider using Veeam Cloud Connect (my preference), or get a license of Crashplan for the VM so we can download the files they need in a pinch.
Is there a reason not to go with a refurb server here? I didn't even price out a new server for this. If they were running 10 VMs, then I could see the need for it. As long as we have gear on the HCL that is covered under warranty for parts, I think we are ok. Would you go new, or is my thinking along the right lines here?
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Nice little project.
I see no reason a used server wouldn't work here.
Will you make it an AD box as well?
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I would go refurb. You may look at dfs-r and replicate files back to HQ for backup.
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@Dashrender said:
Nice little project.
I see no reason a used server wouldn't work here.
Will you make it an AD box as well?
I think that makes sense due to the fact that machines at all sites are on one domain. One of the VMs could just be AD, DNS, DHCP for that site. All sites are connected via site-to-site VPN. The site in question here will have 35/5 coax with our HQ being on 50/50 fiber. One would think this would not need to be a read-only DC.
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If you get a server, I would only do refurb.
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Have you considered just getting a NAS? If the only role is as a file server, why get a server at all?
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@scottalanmiller said:
Have you considered just getting a NAS? If the only role is as a file server, why get a server at all?
to host the offline programming software.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Have you considered just getting a NAS? If the only role is as a file server, why get a server at all?
to host the offline programming software.
Oh thanks, missed that detail.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Have you considered just getting a NAS? If the only role is as a file server, why get a server at all?
to host the offline programming software.
Oh thanks, missed that detail.
If not for that, I could see how a NAS would be a good fit. Here's a silly question...how do people who just have a NAS back up the data? I feel like Netgear has some kind of cloud backup option baked into theirs. And I think the Drobo 5Ns allow you to do a headless install of Crashplan or other backup services. Maybe other vendors are much the same? I don't have experience with many NAS devices.
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You mean backup TO a NAS or backup the NAS itself?
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@scottalanmiller said:
You mean backup TO a NAS or backup the NAS itself?
Backup the NAS itself and the data on it is what I meant.
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Heavily depends on the NAS. Most of the time you back up using whatever normal backup software that you have. Backing up a NAS is like backing up nearly any normal file server.
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Refurb will work a treat, no need for new. I'd go 7200rpm rust in a larger size (1tb+) because.... well they're cheap, why not! Doubt you'd save more than $10/drive between 300gb & 1tb.
Personally I'd consider upping the ram to 64gb, it should be a super cheap option too (under $100) and then you can give the vm's ALL the ram they'll ever want. Slightly wasteful, sure, but for a remote location it's ok IMHO to splurge a bit on stuff that'll help prevent silly problems.
Dual PSU is a good call, cheap upgrade & cheap insurance, again especially for a remote location you won't touch and clean often.
For CPU, see if they have a cheap upgrade to a low wattage energy efficient model. Keeps heat down, which keeps fan RPM down, which keeps dust down, which keeps your server running better longer. Also electricity savings, huzzah!
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Also consider a 2U unit - my personal favourite is the R510 because old, cheap, powerful & 3.5" drives.
2x L5630 2.13ghz 4core 40w
64gb ram
h700 512mb (no batt, but you have a good UPS right? riiiiiight? :))
raid10
6x1tb (2tb $20 more/drive)
iDRAC6 enterprise
redundant 750w
ready rails (because you're worth it!)
3yr XByte NBD
$3015USDEdit: BIOS fan settings should be set to silent/quiet if they exist followed by temp monitoring under load to ensure it's safe. This will do wonders for it's long term life, especially if in a dusty environment like a closet or $diety knows where else. If you see temps over 50c to 60c on CPU under load, turn up the fans until you don't. Anything over 60c for long periods will just BBQ all the capacitors in your power supplies.
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The R510 is great. We have three.
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@scottalanmiller what's the HP equiv I can look up? dell seems to command a premium on ebay and I want an R510 for my own junk
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@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller what's the HP equiv I can look up? dell seems to command a premium on ebay and I want an R510 for my own junk
xbyte is your ticket there. Nothing will compete in price.
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The closest HP is the DL380 e series. E = economy.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller what's the HP equiv I can look up? dell seems to command a premium on ebay and I want an R510 for my own junk
xbyte is your ticket there. Nothing will compete in price.
Yep - through XByte the R610 with 6 300 GB 10K SAS, PERC6i, redundant PSUs, dual Intel Xeon E5520 @ 2.26 GHz, Broadcom NetXtreme II 5709c Dual Port Gigabit Ethernet cards (2 of these) is about $1500. AMAZING.
But I agree the R510 is worth a look. We have one that is an ESXi host at another site with 7200 RPM SATA drives, and it is running like a champ.
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You want a reason against buying refurbished servers from xbyte? i've got one....
Because you hate having all that money, and you want to spend it on something!
that being said i have about 7 or 8 xbyte servers in the wild and LOVE THEM. service is much better than dell, @BradfromxByte is just a swell dude to work with.
