Server-Mainboards and how to find them, SATA ports, ECC memory and big confusion

[CameraRick]

Hi there,

 

I'm sorry for this title. My head is on fire and I have trouble wrapping my head around all this.

I'm in the middle of building a rather small unRAID Server for company use. It's going to be a file server only, people won't work from it but will copy data from and to it. Parallel access will happen, but with few (say 3-4 at most) people, not with 10+

There's not going to be a Plex server on there, maybe a sparsly used Windows VM. Few to no Dockers. Unassigned Devices and Krusader will be needed.

Ideally I wanna be able to use more than 12 drives, 16 maybe?

 

I have quite a bit of hardware sitting around here that I would love to re-use for this endevour.

- I have at least 256GB DDR3 registered DDR3 RAM in various DIMM sizes (mainly 16GB, some 32GB)

- 2x Intel Xeon X5690 (socket FCLGA1366) are available

- I also have at least one, maybe even two Intel Xeon E5-1680 v2 (socket FCLGA2011) at hand

 

I am aware that this is old tech, but I do believe it should be enough for such a server? I also love the idea of re-using this stuff instead of throwing it out (and my superiors do enjoy that, too)

 

Now, ECC registered RAM is good for server use, all the CPUs can work with it (and either still do or did at this point in time).

 

My issue is, I don't understand the rest of the setup all too much. I have a terrible time finding proper server mainboards to support ECC memory but also lots of SATA slots. How does it work? I see the huge unRAID Servers all the time, sometimes with 16 or even 48 HDD bays, how do you even connect them? I had not many good experiences with SATA PCI express cards, or are there really good ones?

Are there any lists/websites that properly list Server Mainboards, where I can sort stuff? Most server stores I find have their boards not even filtered by CPU socket or RAM type (DDR3 vs DDR4 for example), so it's a bit frustrating to try to find anything there.

 

I build computers for my private needs for some decades and also have my own unRAID server, but this really became a challenge for me.

 

Any pointers?

 

Best Regards

[CameraRick]

By now, one mystery is lifted: instead of SATA cards, it seems one should use SCSI HBA cards, as suggested here: https://unraid-guides.com/2020/12/07/dont-ever-use-cheap-pci-e-sata-expansion-cards-with-unraid/

So that is one thing out of my head, good to know for sure.

 

On the mainboard-front, I did not make any progress though, still same old

 

[ashman70]

You want to use a SAS PCIe HBA that can support SAS and SATA cards, these card typically support up to 8 drives each, so if you want more than 8 drives you would need two.

There are breakout cables you can buy that connect to the HBA cards and then to each drive itself.

They look like this: 

The hardware you listed is fine for what you want to do. it is a good idea to have an SSD for cache and VM's for performance.

 

[CameraRick]

Hi there ashman,

 

that's the conclusion I got to in the addendum that pushed the topic, haha

I now read about HBAs and I'm keen to work with them. However, my issue of finding even a list with suitable mainboards so I can search for specific models is in vein so far

 

best,

Rick

[bwnautilus]

If you're going to build a dual Xeon server with ECC ram then I would consider Supermicro for your motherboard.  I have two of them for my Unraid servers and their customer support is pretty good.  For compatibility with the Xeon 5600 series take a look at the Motherboard/Servers section at the bottom of this page:

https://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/xeon_5600.cfm

And then see if there are any for sale on ebay.

 

[BillDStrong]

If you are looking to find Server boards for old CPUs, look at reddit's Home Lab Sales. 

 

It is essentially a marketplace specialized for exactly that. You can also use the labgopher tool made by some of the folks on the HomeLab Reddit that scrapes eBay for some popular servers that can use those parts.

 

Browse their wiki to find links to Government auctions, and other trusted suppliers for older tech, if you don't want to risk trading on Home Lab Sales itself. 

 

You can also look at ServeTheHome forums for sell buy and trades. They tend to find great deals on HDs and really overkill tech like 4U Supermicro Servers like this beast that can use 4x E7 v2/v3/v4 CPUs, supports up to 12TB of DDR3 or DDR4, and has 4x PCI-E x16, and either 4x or 7x PCI-E x8 slots depending on how you populate the memory. The chasis supports 24 3.5" SAS3 12G/SATA3 6G drives. Here is an eBay listing for it, with 256GB Memory.

 

Have fun going down the rabbit hole.

Edited March 24, 2022 by BillDStrong