Home Build vs Refurb Enterprise Kit

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BillHicksRIP

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Hi. I'm looking to acquire a pair of ESXi hosts for a home lab but I'm tying myself up in knots at the possibilities so was looking for some general advice, if possible. I've set myself a ballpark budget of £500 ($855) per host and each need to have at least 32GB. They'll be used to host 3-4 VMs each, nothing too CPU-intensive, and on 24/7.

I'm happy to consider putting together a whitebox, but weighing up the costs and features, I'm wondering whether just to pick up a pair of servers off Ebay.

For example, there are current deals like this:-

DELL 1950 III V3
2 X QUAD CORE X5470 3.33GHZ PROCESSORS
32GB RAM ( 8 X 4GB)
4 X DELL 300GB 2.5" SAS DRIVES
PERC 6i
DRAC 5
DVDRW
£500

DELL POWEREDGE SERVER 2950 III
2 X 2.50GHZ QUAD E5420 XEONS
32GB
2X 500GB SATA
PERC 6i
2 X PSU
£400

Assuming I took a punt on these, the big concerns are power and noise. I could house them in my garage so noise may not be a huge factor but I am concerned about the power draw if they're running 24/7. Alternatively, I've been looking at single-CPU self-builds based on Haswell but due to the cost of memory, I'll be looking at twice the price of one of these PowerEdges.

Grateful for any feedback.
 
An 8U server rack will cost you less than £100. Just add some foam padding to absorb the noise.
 
BillHicksRIP said:
Hi. I'm looking to acquire a pair of ESXi hosts for a home lab but I'm tying myself up in knots at the possibilities so was looking for some general advice, if possible. I've set myself a ballpark budget of £500 ($855) per host and each need to have at least 32GB. They'll be used to host 3-4 VMs each, nothing too CPU-intensive, and on 24/7.

I'm happy to consider putting together a whitebox, but weighing up the costs and features, I'm wondering whether just to pick up a pair of servers off Ebay.

For example, there are current deals like this:-

DELL 1950 III V3
2 X QUAD CORE X5470 3.33GHZ PROCESSORS
32GB RAM ( 8 X 4GB)
4 X DELL 300GB 2.5" SAS DRIVES
PERC 6i
DRAC 5
DVDRW
£500

DELL POWEREDGE SERVER 2950 III
2 X 2.50GHZ QUAD E5420 XEONS
32GB
2X 500GB SATA
PERC 6i
2 X PSU
£400

Assuming I took a punt on these, the big concerns are power and noise. I could house them in my garage so noise may not be a huge factor but I am concerned about the power draw if they're running 24/7. Alternatively, I've been looking at single-CPU self-builds based on Haswell but due to the cost of memory, I'll be looking at twice the price of one of these PowerEdges.

Grateful for any feedback.
Click to expand...

The real choice you face is whether to pay:
1. up front (low power new build)
-or-
2. down the road (power bill for older servers)

It's the very reason I stopped using my first lab (PowerEdge 1900's + 750/745N)

Be resourceful .... start with one server (new build) and then when possible ..build up the second. Keep an eye out for Dell Poweredge T110 II/ T20's
or IBM ThinkServer TS140 that have popped up here and there. Most recently the TS140 ws sold for ~300 with an E3-1225 Xeon ...that was a pretty good deal.

EDIT: Don't know what prices are like across the pond there .... but you get the idea.
 
Something else to consider is the age: these are 7+ years old.
 
Didn't realise these things were 7 years old. Thanks for the tips. This one looks like it could do the job and save me the hassle of building them. £660 each.

LENOVO ThinkServer TS140 32GB ESXi 5.5 Bundle

1 x Intel E3-1225v3 processor 3.2 GHz, 4C, 8M Cache, 4.00 GT/s, 84W,
32 GB (4 x 8GB DDR3 ECC-UDIMM),
500GB 7200RPM 3.5" DC SATA, RAID 0,1,5,10,
450W PSU,
1 Year Warranty,
Bootable vSphere ESXi 5.5 Installer on 8GB USB 3.0 Drive
 
Dell 1950s and 2950s draw a ton of power.

Look into the C1100s that sip power. Plus they are newer and you can get them loaded with tons of ram cheaply (at least in the US)
 
klank said:
Dell 1950s and 2950s draw a ton of power.

Look into the C1100s that sip power. Plus they are newer and you can get them loaded with tons of ram cheaply (at least in the US)
Click to expand...

This.

Also look for the HP DL160 G6 servers, i'm running a few here along with a c1100 and they are great.
 
Dell T20's can be had with single Xeons and can take up to 32GB RAM for like $500 or so. Add the extra RAM, and you're probably about right at budget, with a shiny new server.

They go on sale constantly. I've seen them for $100-150 off regularly, with free shipping--but that's here in the US.
 
With those DL160 G6 servers you can upgrade to two of the 6core 1366 Xeons(gives you 24cores with HT) and up to 72GB of ddr3 for a pretty cheap investment. Personally I would try to stay away from the Core2 and older Xeons as they are limited in features available to the host. You also get 4 2.5" SAS or sata drive bays to build a nice local array. From my experience they are fairly quiet under minimal load not sure how they get when going full bore.
 
aggiec05 said:
If I had it to do over again I would be looking at Intel Avoton. You get 4 cores/8 threads, up to 64GB ram, at 20W TDP.

I prefer the supermicro versions such as:
Supermicro A1SAi-2750F
Supermicro-a1sam-2750f
Click to expand...


The Avoton/Rangeley (C2000 series Atoms) do not support HyperThreading. There are versions with 2, 4, or 8 real cores. Also, good luck finding 16GB SO-DIMMs of any type, much less ECC unbuffered ones. You're realistically limited to 32GB for the system.

FWIW, a basic E3 Xeon build costs barely more than a C2750 build, draws not much more power at idle, but has much more CPU headroom for any guest that might need it. C2550 systems are relatively a bit more reasonable, being ~$80-100 cheaper, but you only get four cores instead of eight. Though the Atom systems are nice and small and typically have a couple more NICs.
 
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