TLDR: I'm going round in circles trying to spec out what will be a major upgrade. Normally I'll be digging into the forums and getting this straight in my head, but the PSU in my existing server is beginning to fail - so I need to make some decisions sooner rather than later. Any thoughts to help clarify my thinking/links to good resources will be appreciated.

 

Budget: I'm quite content that this will break £1000-1200.

 

Real world usage (towards 'max requirements'): Able to stream at least an HD movie whilst working on 2-4 VMs (I want to do a lot of practicing setting up Domain Controllers and configuring server/client setups in a local lab environment). My easy get out would be to just focus on streaming media, particularly 4K (with some more 'lightweight' plugins such as Home Automation, Calibre, etc.) and keep the lab environment on a separate machine/laptop. I would also look to provide a VM for MrsLeek, such as a Windows VM that she would connect into from her MacBook Air (performance = general browsing, not gaming).

 

Build options: I've got three rough configurations at the moment

• TR1920X, 16GB RAM: plenty of cores/overhead to handle most things. But the problems that people have been having with TR makes me nervous
• E5-2620 v4, 16GB RAM, dual-slot MoBo: The idea here is that it's enough processing power to do most thing, and if the VM/Lab environment becomes serious then adding a 2nd Xeon provides the extra cores that are needed.
• Do nothing: Buy the power supply (the Seasonic SSR-750FX seems to cover almost every permutation of build I can think of), fit it....and take the time to research my wider requirement. You can guarantee if I did then then something else would break in a couple of weeks time! 

 

Things to solve: Can I add a 1050 gfx card to offload the 4K content work? Would I need to with a TR/8-10 core Xeon? Have most/all of the TR problems been solved? What's left to fix? What haven't I thought of yet?!?

 

Footnote: You'll see by my signature that any serious upgrade will blow the socks off my current build! 

 

Edited April 12, 20188 yr by MrLeek

Here is an interesting thread over at the Plex forums, about halfway down a guy talks about his unRAID server and streaming 4K content, check it out.

 

https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/279271/best-solution-for-watching-4k-content-on-internal-home-network

 

I think if you want to go the lab route then the Xeon build with the option for the second processor is the way to go. It should give you more than enough cores required to spin up as many virtual machines as you want. You may want to consider starting with 32GB or 64GB of RAM as you don't want to starve your VM's of memory, not that DC's require much in the way of RAM. Also consider ECC ram, while it is not required it's a nice to have.

With that many VM's, I'd stick to Xeon. It seems to have fewer issues (that's my anecdotal observation).

With that many VM's, I'd seriously consider more than 16GB RAM.

Just a curiosity, why the WinVM for the Macbook user?

If I was going to venture down the dual CPU path (and if I was setting up a networking lab, I would acquire a dual CPU setup) - I'd look at used enterprise equipment, server room pulls, stuff like that. It is frequently an excellent value for the money.

All excellent points, however I would just say this about looking at used enterprise equipment. While you can find deals for sure, you have to understand the world of proprietary hardware that you are getting into. So if you find a deal on a Dell R710, great server, but it only comes with one CPU and a small amount of RAM, no drives, no RAID controller and only one PSU. You have to find drive cages from Dell for that server, maybe a Dell heatsink if you want to put in a second CPU, you'll have to find an HBA or RAID controller that will do JBOD and you will have to find a PSU that fit's that server. Not this not a big deal, but it's not stuff you can wander down to your local shop and buy, most of it will have to bought online from places like eBay or other online retailers. Now you might be able to find a used server that has everything you want, but I think I've made my point. Also, depending on it's age, used enterprise servers can draw a lot of power too.

Really appreciate the posts - thanks @ashman70 and @whipdancer . Few thoughts:

 

• You're both on the money regarding RAM. 16GB is prob the minimum for this - but in principle it's easy enough to drop more in. If the VM demands increase then it also makes it more sensible to get the 2nd Xeon.
• I've also had the half-idea (inspired by looking at ashman70's sig) to end up with two unRaid builds - one for media, the other for VMs. Sure, I'll probably experiment with VMs on the media-only build, then build the 2nd unRaid server and aim it at VMs only. It'll also mean I have clearer ideas about the spec needed to do the job. ISTR seeing a Lian-Li case that allowed two PCs to exist in a single case. Hmm....this could be worth considering. 

 

1 hour ago, ashman70 said:

 While you can find deals for sure, you have to understand the world of proprietary hardware that you are getting into. 

 

This is kinda what makes me wary of the eBay route. I'm half convinced that the UK second-hand market largely sucks compared to the US - and I've seen a few Xeon's from the US that looked promising....then I see the crazy postage. It feels like there's more pitfalls to be had - sure, there's lots of ways to gain taking this route, but also lots of ways to screw it up.

 

1 hour ago, whipdancer said:

Just a curiosity, why the WinVM for the Macbook user?

 

it's some accounting software she's using for her course. Might be Sage(?) might be something else. But it's something she mentioned in the past...and if I get to deliver a WinVM that works well then a) I score points and b) get to justify spending more money! 

2 hours ago, ashman70 said:

All excellent points, however I would just say this about looking at used enterprise equipment. While you can find deals for sure, you have to understand the world of proprietary hardware that you are getting into. So if you find a deal on a Dell R710, great server, but it only comes with one CPU and a small amount of RAM, no drives, no RAID controller and only one PSU. You have to find drive cages from Dell for that server, maybe a Dell heatsink if you want to put in a second CPU, you'll have to find an HBA or RAID controller that will do JBOD and you will have to find a PSU that fit's that server. Not this not a big deal, but it's not stuff you can wander down to your local shop and buy, most of it will have to bought online from places like eBay or other online retailers. Now you might be able to find a used server that has everything you want, but I think I've made my point. Also, depending on it's age, used enterprise servers can draw a lot of power too.

 

Yes, I do agree.  If you go the enterprise route you need to do some research.  That is exactly how I started.  I watched prices on various servers to figure out where on the price curve I wanted to try and hit (how much you get for many $$).

In the end, I got a great deal and sold it after I used it a couple of years.

I was recently entertaining upgrades and looked at a complete server that was definitely a few years old, but would still be a massive upgrade my current equipment.  Mostly though, I was considering piecing it out for the RAM & CPU's - and putting those in a compatible (but non proprietary) motherboard. The seller was asking a little over $300 and that would have netted me 2 Xeon CPU's (that are a year newer than my existing i5) and 64GB of ECC DDR3 RAM, and a compatible Lsi driver controller board.

Just a little insight into how I was approaching this topic.

43 minutes ago, MrLeek said:

it's some accounting software she's using for her course. Might be Sage(?) might be something else. But it's something she mentioned in the past...and if I get to deliver a WinVM that works well then a) I score points and b) get to justify spending more money! 

FYI.

If the WinVM route doesn't look promising, you can use BootCamp to install Win on the Mac (I'm a Win dev, but use a MacBook).

You can also use something like VirtualBox to allow you to run the software.

I'm drifting more and more towards something like this:

• E5-2630 v4 - I don't see the gain from a 2640 to justify around £250 more. Plus the 2630's are sub £600 at the moment, which is nearly a steal.
• Asus - Z10PE-D8 WS SSI EEB - I need to do more research into the 2 x LGA2011-3 boards, but I love Asus gear
• 16GB RAM - I take the point that more may be needed, but if I see the value in the 2nd CPU then adding another 16-32 RAM at the same time seems like a good shout
• Seasonic 750w PSU (as above) - good brand, great reviews
• Add a couple of new WD Red 4TB HDDs for good measure (the drives I've got have been in there for years)

I'm currently digging through google results looking for a decent hot swap 3U case that doesn't cost the earth. Although I've just found this one from Server Case which is a bit pricy but will do. Does the case NEED to be SATA3 capable, or does it not really matter when it comes to UnRaid?

 

(and I'm really not impressed with what I'm seeing on eBay - i've seen plenty of v3 processors selling for 10-15% more than the v4 model. The cases seem dire at the moment as well)

 

19 hours ago, whipdancer said:

If the WinVM route doesn't look promising, you can use BootCamp to install Win on the Mac (I'm a Win dev, but use a MacBook).

You can also use something like VirtualBox to allow you to run the software.

 

Yeah, I had a go at setting up BootCamp for her a while ago - had to put drivers onto a USB stick and other stuff. She lost patience in the end  Option b is Parallels - I was surprised when I used VirtualBox on my own iMac to set up Win7 (for Cisco Packet Tracer) as the performance was dire. A similar story on her MacBook and i'll be in trouble!!

On 4/13/2018 at 1:14 PM, MrLeek said:

Yeah, I had a go at setting up BootCamp for her a while ago - had to put drivers onto a USB stick and other stuff. She lost patience in the end  Option b is Parallels - I was surprised when I used VirtualBox on my own iMac to set up Win7 (for Cisco Packet Tracer) as the performance was dire. A similar story on her MacBook and i'll be in trouble!!

I switched from Parallels to BootCamp for performance reasons. Visual Studio ran horribly in a VM.