Microserver Replacements?

H

howamidifferent

n00b
Joined
Feb 21, 2011
Messages
40
I hope this is the correct forum to ask my question since its a storage rig I want to build.

I have two HP Microservers with 4 x 2TB drives in each, an external esata 4 bay hardware raid caddy with 4 x 2TB drives, an 8 bay esata enclosure with 8 x 2TB drives and multiple other smaller capacity sata scratch drives I use for moving stuff around using a dual dock. Each has 8GB of ECC ram running Win 2008R2. I also record to them via two IP cameras for security.
I want to eliminate all of the power plugs, cables, flashing leds and if possible the noisy fans to try and put together a decent home server which will mainly act as a NAS streaming video to several media players, with two possibly three VMs running on it. One for WHS2011 to do client backups, one for W7 for usenet downloading, torrents etc and possibly one to act as a testing ground for any new stuff I feel like playing with.

So currently my microservers handle all of this nicely while being relatively low on power consumption. I'd like to build a replacement server to house all of the drives and handle the VMs but still be as low power consumption wise as possible. In the microservers I also have a HP410 hardware raid card and a highpoint 2680 raid card which I currently use for raid 5 sets as well as a software raid solution FlexRaid.
I may or not use any or all of these solutions in the new build. I’m open to all ideas.

Where I’m lost is in the selection of the appropriate psu, motherboard, processor and ram to accomplish these goals while keeping power consumption as low as possible.
Its been many years since I last built a system so am not uptodate with all of the available hardware choices. I want to put all into a full tower case maybe something like the Lian-Li PC-D8000 when available.

Can anyone advise me on the best hardware to accomplish this goal? :confused:

Many thanks for taking the time to read this.
 
What is your budget?

Yikes... so it looks like I really need to update these but here is the mid-range server buyer's guide I did awhile back. You can probably use that as a base then go one way or the other but that is a decent base. Big thing now is that you would use an Ivy Bridge Xeon E3 instead of Sandy Bridge if you went the Xeon route. Here's the last Ivy Bridge Xeon E3 review I did, and that has a lot of data points for the Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge Xeon E3 generations.

Now you might want to look at the X9SCM-iiF or X9SCM-F over the X9SCL+-F but all will do the trick.
 
I've had a quick look at those motherboards but they dont seem to have an PCEi x16 slot so I couldn't use my HPP410 raid card in that...At least I dont think it would work in an x8 slot.
Any other recommended boards that would have at least one if not more x16 slots?
 
howamidifferent said:
I've had a quick look at those motherboards but they dont seem to have an PCEi x16 slot so I couldn't use my HPP410 raid card in that...At least I dont think it would work in an x8 slot.
Any other recommended boards that would have at least one if not more x16 slots?
Click to expand...

Sorry lost track of this. The HP P410 is a PCIe x8 card so not sure why you need x16.

And the PC-D8000 is cool, but a Norco RPC-4220 or RPC-4220 would be about the same price but with hot swap bays.
 
Just saw the PC-D8000, looks like it wouldn't be that hard to toss another 10 or so drives above the PSU with a little modding. Also love that the IO/Power is removable (it takes up a 5.25 slot).
 
Yeah, that was my bad...your right the HP P410 is an x8....I think the reason I had it in my head I needed an x16 slot was because it occupied an x16 in the microserver since there was no x8 in those.

I've since bought a 24 bay case and a supermicro board and an Intel Xeon E3 1230 v2.
Not had time to open them up yet.
 
howamidifferent said:
Yeah, that was my bad...your right the HP P410 is an x8....I think the reason I had it in my head I needed an x16 slot was because it occupied an x16 in the microserver since there was no x8 in those.

I've since bought a 24 bay case and a supermicro board and an Intel Xeon E3 1230 v2.
Not had time to open them up yet.
Click to expand...

I know the feeling. I have piles of stuff to open.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top