Server Required - Home Use

[MatthewL]

Currently have 2 HP ProLiants, a G4 and G5 with 4Gb ram each and various drives. I have just looked to upgrade both to the 8Gb they can handle and to put a 2Tb drive in each would cost me some where in the region of £450, at that price I was thinking I could buy one server with a higher specification.

 

I am quite partial to a HP server, they run quiet and can sit in my room, it needs to be a tower server, backup device not required. Needs to be Intel based, at least 8Gb ram and not too sure on hard drive size. Personally I would put 2Tb in it, looking to raid if I go for one server. Not too up on this so could someone advise.

 

Going to be a VM host, currently have a few test boxes running on the two I have although not all the time, mainly a test bed but looking to put it into full use for testing and development.

 

What can you recommend for me out there?

[Midget]

I've recently been having a play with a basic ML150. Good enough little server, installed ESXi to a flash drive on the internal USB and use the 4x drives for the datastore.

 

It's not on the VMware supported hardware list though, but if you use the default ESXi install (not the HP altered one) then it does work.

[MatthewL]

Mine is currently on a ML110 G4 using ESXi but just fancy having a bit more to play with and having 1 box rather than 2 unless its cheaper to upgrade the 2 I have!

[dhicks]

What can you recommend for me out there?

 

I've just bought one of these (should hopefully be delivered today):

 

Tranquil PC Limited INTEL i SERIES - Power Systems

 

Manages to run a fanless Core i3 or i5 and has 3 eSata ports so you can attach fanless external harddrive caddies - I'm planning on two 2TB disks for a software RAID array and booting from a 16GB USB stick.

 

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David Hicks