Quiet Server for Home?

[JRA]

Hello all - I'm in need of recommendations for a home server. Or a couple of recommendations. It must be/have:

 

- A 'tower' sort rather than a 'rack' sort.

- A 'proper' server like what HP or Dell make. Onboard RAID etc.

- Must be quiet! It'll live in a lounge so can't have fans going 'blarrghrgahagrgrhhl' all the time.

- Must cost less than a grand.

 

Thanks all for any sort of suggestion!

[GuyJD]

I know HP do a micro server for small business/home use, not sure on dB levels though.

 

Do you need a server? most modern desktop PC motherboards can do raid these days.

[sted]

I know HP do a micro server for small business/home use, not sure on dB levels though.

 

Do you need a server? most modern desktop PC motherboards can do raid these days.

ive been running an old one of them at home for years and its pretty quiet got one in the old server room here and cant hear it above the other switchgear etc in there

[JRA]

Thanks GuyJD! Yes I've been more than pondering the HP Microservers... My worry with a 'regular' motherboard though would be that if the board does fail, to recover the RAID array would I need to find that exact motherboard with that exact chipset revision and this or that exact version of this or that firmware to get it back again, sorta thing?

 

Cheers for the reply!

[Arthur]

My worry with a 'regular' motherboard though would be that if the board does fail, to recover the RAID array would I need to find that exact motherboard with that exact chipset revision and this or that exact version of this or that firmware to get it back again, sorta thing?

Use software-based RAID (Storage Spaces, ZFS etc.) or drive pooling (StableBit DrivePool, UnRAID etc.) then you won't have that issue.

[mavhc]

Something like Fractal Design perhaps.

 

You don't want hardware raid, unless it's very expensive. Just use ZFS.

 

  pool: zeno
state: ONLINE
status: Some supported features are not enabled on the pool. The pool can
       still be used, but some features are unavailable.
action: Enable all features using 'zpool upgrade'. Once this is done,
       the pool may no longer be accessible by software that does not support
       the features. See zpool-features(5) for details.
 scan: scrub repaired 0 in 23h17m with 0 errors on Fri Sep 16 08:14:02 2016
config:

       NAME                                  STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
       zeno                                  ONLINE       0     0     0
         raidz2-0                            ONLINE       0     0     0
           ata-ST8000AS0002-1NA17Z_Z8404XYA  ONLINE       0     0     0
           ata-ST8000AS0002-1NA17Z_Z84057V2  ONLINE       0     0     0
           ata-ST8000AS0002-1NA17Z_Z8405F81  ONLINE       0     0     0
           ata-ST8000AS0002-1NA17Z_Z8405QQB  ONLINE       0     0     0
           ata-ST8000AS0002-1NA17Z_Z8405R3Z  ONLINE       0     0     0
           ata-ST8000AS0002-1NA17Z_Z8405RNW  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

[zag]

I have a Qnap NAS with SSD drives in RAID, works well and is dead silent and uses very little power.

 

Its linux based with a nice web interface and apps you can use for all types of server things.

[CAWJames]

I have an Wyse thin client with an external 2TB HD running Debian and that's virtually silent apart from hard drive noises! and uses only a few watts to tens of watts(wall wart for the thin client and HDD)But you probably need more than that if your talking RAID!

[Oaktech]

Wanna buy a Dell poweredge t310 with an 80g ssd and 3x 500gb?

 

http://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ukbsdt1/product-support/servicetag/FWX9R4J/configuration 2.66ghz quad core xeon, 16gb ram.

 

Ticks the proper server

 

Sure if they get red hot they sound like a hurricaine, but running at room temp they're virtually silent.

 

They seem to be about £150 on ebay.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Oaktech

[GuyJD]

If you do go down the HP Microserver route keep an eye out for cashback deals, I've seen them drop down to around £115 after cash back (obviously that's the entry level) then all you need are the HDD's and a bit of extra ram if the 4GB supplied isn't enough. Edited November 10, 2016 by GuyJD

[JoeBloggs]

what about this? HPE ProLiant Gen8 4GB RAM MicroServer | Ebuyer.com

 

£178.98 inc. vat

£118.98 after cashback

[LeMarchand]

I'm amazed @ICTDirect_Dave hasn't got an offer for you. Not sure how quiet his are, though.

[robsonma]

Ive just sold My HP Micro Server Gen 8 on Ebay 16GB Ram, like new, Ive still got a HP N54L G7 on there if you PM Me I can send you the link if you want to take a look.

[computer_expert]

The gen8 Microserver (as mentioned above)

Dell T20

Lenovo TS140 or TS440

FUJITSU SIEMENS PRIMERGY TX1310

HP ml10 v2 (should be a gen9 iirc)

 

I think most of the above have cashback offers on at the moment.

[JRA]

Gosh this thread took off! Thanks so much all!

 

Yes I should ALSO have added that it's going to run Windows (I know I know) as my gf is terminally allergic to Linux. If it were me I'd go Ubuntu and software raid it but meh.

 

Lots to look at though, thank you all! If there are any more to come though do keep them coming. :)

[mavhc]

Why are people generally accessing the server OS?

[dhicks]

Hello all - I'm in need of recommendations for a home server.

 

I have a couple of servers built from Tranquil PCs cases - solid aluminium for passive cooling, no fan or other moving parts. If you use an SSD rather than a mechanical disk it should make no noise whatsoever.

 

Tranquil PC cases are very well engineered, but can be a tad pricy - Streacom do very similar cases that you can build your own system around. Or, of course, Very PC make their own range of near-silent PCs, I'm sure they'll recommend you something suitible for use as a server.

 

What is it you plan to do with the server? I looked at upgrading my home hardware, but was surprised to find just how cheap some virtual servers can be these days - OVH, in particular, seem to be very well priced. I have a Debian-based server with them now, costing something like £3 a month, but I think they do Windows server for just a little bit more.

[zag]

I have a couple of servers built from Tranquil PCs cases - solid aluminium for passive cooling, no fan or other moving parts. If you use an SSD rather than a mechanical disk it should make no noise whatsoever.

 

Tranquil PC cases are very well engineered, but can be a tad pricy - Streacom do very similar cases that you can build your own system around. Or, of course, Very PC make their own range of near-silent PCs, I'm sure they'll recommend you something suitible for use as a server.

 

What is it you plan to do with the server? I looked at upgrading my home hardware, but was surprised to find just how cheap some virtual servers can be these days - OVH, in particular, seem to be very well priced. I have a Debian-based server with them now, costing something like £3 a month, but I think they do Windows server for just a little bit more.

 

Unfortunately Tranquil PC sold their NUC silent designs to some swiss company and appear to no longer make them

 

I have one of the abel models on my NUC and its been running 24/7 for 3 years now as an htpc. Such as shame as they were a great British company.

[Davit2005]

Might be a slight variation on subject but what are the real world Power Consumoption figures like on the small dell servers i.e. T130 T330.

 

I must be getting greedy now. I've gone from a HP N40L with 8GB to now looking at more than 36GB for a home server compatible with ESXi6.

 

I have a TS140 but need more RAM and more than one.

[ITGURU]

Thanks GuyJD! Yes I've been more than pondering the HP Microservers... My worry with a 'regular' motherboard though would be that if the board does fail, to recover the RAID array would I need to find that exact motherboard with that exact chipset revision and this or that exact version of this or that firmware to get it back again, sorta thing?

Cheers for the reply!

 

RAID is not a backup solution! I'm a photographer and despite all my images being stored on a Hardware Array, I still then backup to a single 3TB drive which is stored securely with bitlocker in case of a raid failure, as this drive can then be read in any machine.

[mavhc]

We should stop talking about backup and talk about: hardware failure, software failure, human failure, location failure.

 

zfs raidz for the first, zfs snapshots for software and human failure, zfs send to another location for location failure.

[sted]

RAID is not a backup solution! I'm a photographer and despite all my images being stored on a Hardware Array, I still then backup to a single 3TB drive which is stored securely with bitlocker in case of a raid failure, as this drive can then be read in any machine.

id argue raid 1 is at least to the point of if a drive/pc fails you have a backup granted if somewhere burns down not so much

[ITGURU]

id argue raid 1 is at least to the point of if a drive/pc fails you have a backup granted if somewhere burns down not so much

 

If you have a raid 1 set with 2 drives and 1 failed and the pc failed, would you be able to connect the remaining drive to ANY other hardware and get the data off it easily?

[sted]

If you have a raid 1 set with 2 drives and 1 failed and the pc failed, would you be able to connect the remaining drive to ANY other hardware and get the data off it easily?

raid one i have in the past with little to no issue

[ITGURU]

raid one i have in the past with little to no issue

 

I always thought that with any raid system it would mark the drives as only being readable in a RAID system rather than independent as a 'set' and have to import like that.