Home Server Build?

[VulgarDisplay]

I honestly know next to nothing about servers, and as part of my path to a new career in network administration I feel that I need to start using them to gain experience.

What kind of builds do people do for a typical home server? I assume it doesn't need to be massively powerful. I was reading about virtualization being a great way to get the most out of the CPU on the server. If you plan on using virtualization do more cores help?

Since I don't plan on doing anything mission critical I don't think I need expensive server CPU's and RAM because my data won't really matter.

Anyone done a build recently? I'm actually surprised there isn't a sub forum for servers on here.

 

[zerogear]

I had built an intel i3 with a intel media motherboard board with 8gb ram (for vm). I used Lian Li Q25 for case. I am only running 1 vm with it, so as long as you aren't planning on running 3 or 4 vm simultaneously, using a dual core with hyper thread should be fine for the most part.

If you are planning on running Windows Server on an Intel media motherboard, be prepared to hack the network drivers a little, otherwise it refuses to install.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I don't know how many VM's I would be running at any one time. I want to try out a few things like pfense or some other router software.

 

[Cerb]

Spare motherboard, spare case, spare almost anything else but RAM and drives (and PSU, if you have only crappy spares). Basically, figure 3-4x the drives you'd otherwise use, and 16-32GB RAM instead of 8-16GB.

Frankly, a dual-core with HT is fine for quite a few VMs, so long as they all don't hog the CPU. Best would be if they really can't (FI, it's going to be really hard for a file server, phone server, or firewall, to do so in a home environment).

 

[Topweasel]

It depends on what you want to do with the VM's and how many. If its light a i3 or DC Pentium should suffice. If you are going to be loading up the cores regularly than an i5/A6/FX-6k should be a starting point (but the HT on an i7, or an extra module on an FX-8k could come in handy).

Also unless you are running an exsi server, you have to account for host OS and software overhead. Target 32GB of memory and settle on 16 if it brings it out of your price range.

 

[XavierMace]

Are you wanting to get familiar with the hardware too or just the software side of servers? If you've got a suitable spot for it, you can pickup solid used quality servers for really cheap these days to cover all your bases.

You can get refurb HP Proliant DL360 G5's with a pair of quad-core 5500 series Xeon's for $300 on Amazon. The parts are worth twice that easily. You can also find really good deals on Craigslist and surplus auctions (IE gsaauctions.gov) as bigger companies buy these in bulk and just want them gone when it's time to upgrade and smaller companies go under and just want them gone. Depending on your morals, you may get some free software out of it too.

Toss ESXI on there because if you are doing this to prepare for the industry, odds are that's what you are going to be running into. Plus it's fun to play with. Just be aware of the size, space, and noise concerns of a 1U server. Right now I've got 3x Server 2k8 VM's, 2x Server 2k3, and one Windows Home Server VM plus OSX and Android VM's. Server doesn't even blink at that.

Specs on the server:
2x Xeon X5570's
48Gb RAM
Dual Intel Pro/1000 NIC's (Load Balanced)
2x HP Smart Array P800/512mb cards connected to a 20 bay SAS backplane
800w Power Supply

Completely and totally overkill for home use, but oh so awesome. One of the server 2k3 VM's is running a Minecraft server which appreciates having extra CPU power.

 

[mfenn]

It really depends on what you want to do with said server. I have an i3 2100, 8GB of RAM, 500GB HDD mini-ITX box (basically random parts I had laying around except for case and mobo) running ESXi.

It works totally fine running a bunch of Linux server VMs (no X), but it would really fall over if I tried to load up a bunch of heavy Windows Server VMs or put an I/O intensive load on it. In my setup, I find that CPU power is the least of your worries, you really want RAM and HDD space.

 

[XavierMace]

It all depends what the VM's are doing.

RAM, definitely yes. HDD space, depends what your VM's are doing. You can run them pretty thin if you need to be. You can max out a dual core REALLY quickly. Exchange, Game Servers, SQL Servers, etc are all pretty CPU hungry.

 

[mfenn]

It all depends what the VM's are doing.

RAM, definitely yes. HDD space, depends what your VM's are doing. You can run them pretty thin if you need to be. You can max out a dual core REALLY quickly. Exchange, Game Servers, SQL Servers, etc are all pretty CPU hungry.

Exchange and SQL aren't going to hit a CPU bottleneck before they hit an IOPS or RAM bottleneck though. Game servers, maybe.