New server

[Jawloms]

I'm after a new Hyper-V hosting server. Haven't bought one for a few years so just want to check if I'm realistic on pricing;

 

I have up to £4,500 to spend. Rackmounting, Dual PSU, 4x 1GB NIC, able to RAID, at least 3 year warranty, couple of CPUs, 128GB RAM, and then as much storage (at least 10K rpm disks) as I can get within budget.

 

Doable still? It was four years ago when I last bought one!

 

Discussion about why I'm buying an on-site server is not necessary, that's all already been done internally. I'm guessing it will be the last one I buy though!

 

Stuart

[Steve21]

Doable… yes ish at least

 

Currently doing a procurement for a new school and one of the options we were given is:

 

Dell PowerEdge R550 - 2x 4310 CPU, 128GB RAM, 2x 240GB BOSS, 4x 1.2TB 10K, 2x SFP28, Dual PSU. 5 Year NBD - £4664

 

So if you consider out of procurement pricing might be slightly higher. But then you have the non-Dell/lower warranty/non-28 NICs options id say you shouldn’t have a problem around that pricing

 

Steve

[steveg]

Looks to be the right sort of ball-park, I've brought from serversource before, they carry a mix of new and warrantied second hand kit https://www.serversource.co.uk/collections/dell-servers/products/dell-emc-poweredge-r450-1u-rack-server-2-5-8-l

[3s-gtech]

Tried a refurb? Your budget will go a long way, and server hardware can have a pretty insane lifespan especially if you're not that core-count dependant. You'll be able to load up on storage!

[LeMarchand]

Tried a refurb? Your budget will go a long way, and server hardware can have a pretty insane lifespan especially if you're not that core-count dependant. You'll be able to load up on storage!

 

Yep, sounds like a job for @ICTDirect_Dave.

[Wubbalubbadub]

How quick do you need the servers?

 

We’ve just made one of our secondary schools cloud and have 2 x 2 year old mega beasts that we are going to sell.

 

Can probably get them to you first week of summer holiday. Ping me an DM if you want to chat about it, spec etc.

[dhicks]

I'm after a new Hyper-V hosting server. ... Rackmounting, Dual PSU, 4x 1GB NIC, able to RAID, at least 3 year warranty, couple of CPUs, 128GB RAM, and then as much storage (at least 10K rpm disks) as I can get within budget.

 

For Hyper-V, we bought a server with HBA rather than RAID (although we still have a separate 2-disk mirrored RAID array for the boot drive), 2 x 1TB mSATA drives and a bunch of slower high-capacity drives that were then placed into a Windows Storage Spaces array, with the extra-fast mSATA drives as the performance layer and the slower high-capacity drives as the capacity layer. This was through VeryPC, who I can recommend as being very helpful when it comes to discussing this kind of thing.

[Deanuk]

https://www.etb-tech.com/dell-poweredge-r730-configure-to-order.html

 

Summary

Dell PowerEdge R730 Configure To Order

Chassis Model:

1 x Dell PowerEdge R730 Rack Chassis, 8 x 2.5" Backplane

CPU:

2 x Intel Xeon E5-2660 v4 2.00GHz 14-Core CPU SR2N4

Memory:

8 x 16GB PC4-2400T-R DDR4 2Rx8 2400MHz ECC

RAID Controller:

1 x PERC H730 Mini Mono RAID Controller with 1GB Cache

Hard Drives:

8 x Dell 1.2TB SAS 10k 2.5" 12Gbps Hard Drive

Onboard Network Daughter Card:

1 x Dell Intel i350&X540 1/10Gb RJ45 Quad Port RNDC - 99GTM - Ref

Power Supplies:

2 x 750W Hot-Swap Power Supplies (13th & 14th Gen)

Remote Access:

1 x iDRAC8 Enterprise License - Included

Rail Kit:

1 x B6 Sliding Rack Kit

Warranty:

1 x 3 Year - 24x7 - 4 Hour Support Warranty (UK Only)

£1,370.00 - ex vat

[PotNoodleTech]

You get much, MUCH better value if you go manufacturer refurbished from any of the used/second hand suppliers.

 

I got a spanking 2 year old Dell Poweredge 740XD chock full of SSDs and ram and CPUs for around that budget.

 

Multimillion dollar corporations are like SOOOO wasteful that if your not taking advantage of their stupidity, then your not living life properly!

[localzuk]

Honestly, I would recommend looking at a couple of refurb servers instead of a single new one. Set them up hyper-converged, and you then have a much higher level of resilience than with a single unit.

 

I bought 3x Dell R630s with dual E5-2680-V4 CPUS, 192GB RAM, and 2x 240GB SSDs, plus onboard X520/I350 and a secondary X520-DA2 NIC for less than £4k from ICT-Direct. Just needed the extra storage adding to fit our needs. Oh, and they have a 3 year advance replace warranty.

[Jawloms]

Thanks to all for your replies and tips. I have always been very nervous of buying a refurb'd server but as a few people have suggested them and not one person has replied along the lines of "I wouldn't touch them" I'll certainly take a look.

[howartp]

What is the warranty situation on refurb kit?

 

We're looking at a server for Veeam storage at the moment and I like the idea of filling a refurb with SSDs versus a new box without.

[localzuk]

What is the warranty situation on refurb kit?

 

We're looking at a server for Veeam storage at the moment and I like the idea of filling a refurb with SSDs versus a new box without.

 

Depends who you get it from. But the servers I bought, I had a replacement stick of memory out to me next day for an issue I had.

[Steve21]

What is the warranty situation on refurb kit?

 

We're looking at a server for Veeam storage at the moment and I like the idea of filling a refurb with SSDs versus a new box without.

 

That normally depends on the kit

 

Most is warranties via the company (ETB etc do their own as above)

 

But some of the kit they buy is like Dell warehouse ends so that comes with Dell direct but less than the full time as it has to be delivered to the supplier and then you etc

 

Steve

[PotNoodleTech]

What is the warranty situation on refurb kit?

 

We're looking at a server for Veeam storage at the moment and I like the idea of filling a refurb with SSDs versus a new box without.

 

I'd use HDD for Veeam storage - SSD's is a bit of a waste of money and will deteriorate due to constant writing - you don't need that extra read-write speed or access speed - my full backups are done in 2 hours with 12 x spinning 7200 rust drives in Raid6.

[howartp]

I'd use HDD for Veeam storage - SSD's is a bit of a waste of money and will deteriorate due to constant writing - you don't need that extra read-write speed or access speed - my full backups are done in 2 hours with 12 x spinning 7200 rust drives in Raid6.

Fair comment.

 

I'm going round in circles at the moment because our daily backup is taking up to 48 hours and nobody can tell me why!

 

However i've realised the new Synology NAS I was recommended by consultants last year is neither recommended nor supported by Veeam. Whilst my old Veeam backup repo (HP DL380e Gen8 with 60TB storage) is sat empty as the RAID driver isn't supported on 2016/2019 and I decided I shouldn't have my backups running on a non-supported RAID driver.

[PotNoodleTech]

I would reccomend having your actual veeam server as the server you have lots of 4+ tb drives in. Max backup speed. Then you can offload the copy job to various other places if needed.

 

I offload 3tb to a Synology DS 2412 in a few hours in the evenings. 48 hours there's something wrong somewhere.

[howartp]

I would reccomend having your actual veeam server as the server you have lots of 4+ tb drives in. Max backup speed. Then you can offload the copy job to various other places if needed.

 

I offload 3tb to a Synology DS 2412 in a few hours in the evenings. 48 hours there's something wrong somewhere.

The HP was my Veeam backup server and repo until 18 months ago.

 

Just spoke to a supplier who suggested replacing the RAID controller to a current model that compatible with the board - I'd not thought of that so I'm working on that this afternoon.

[jslate1980]

Fair comment.

 

I'm going round in circles at the moment because our daily backup is taking up to 48 hours and nobody can tell me why!

 

However i've realised the new Synology NAS I was recommended by consultants last year is neither recommended nor supported by Veeam. Whilst my old Veeam backup repo (HP DL380e Gen8 with 60TB storage) is sat empty as the RAID driver isn't supported on 2016/2019 and I decided I shouldn't have my backups running on a non-supported RAID driver.

 

Have you considered putting ubuntu or centos on the server then setting up xfs for immutable backups with veeam.

[dmj]

Have you considered putting ubuntu or centos on the server then setting up xfs for immutable backups with veeam.

 

I would seriously consider using ZFS over XFS for storage partitions. The snapshot features are second to none.

A good overview of the features: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

Edited May 19, 2023 by dmj

[jslate1980]

I would seriously consider using ZFS over XFS for storage partitions. The snapshot features are second to none.

A good overview of the features: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

 

XFS is used with Veeam’s hardened repository, and is part of veeam’s best practice. https://www.veeam.com/blog/immutable-backup-solutions-linux-hardened-repository.html?amp=1

Edited May 19, 2023 by jslate1980

[dmj]

XFS is used with Veeam’s hardened repository, and is part of veeam’s best practice. https://www.veeam.com/blog/immutable-backup-solutions-linux-hardened-repository.html?amp=1

 

They probably realise that if you have ZFS experience you can do all the backups without veeam !