Replacing a Personal Rack-Mounted Server?

Starky writes "Many moons ago, I cobbled together a 1U rack mount from parts which has since been diligently serving up my homepage and web sites for family and friends. It's a truly "Mom and Pop Shop" setup, running on a rack secluded in a closet at home over a DSL line. At the time, I was able to piggyback my order on a large order placed by a company for which I was working, allowing me to get a substantial discount. Now, the time has come to consider a replacement. However, I no longer work at a company that orders chassis and chips by the dozen. I would like to get a rack-mountable chassis, but don't know where to go as a lowly individual consumer looking for a box with minimal specifications (1 processor, dual drives, and 1G RAM is about all I need) at a reasonable price. Any recommendation from Slashdotters who maintain their own rigs?"

Reuse the chassis

The rack-mounted chassis is what costs more than the normal PC parts, so just re-use the one you already have and order the rest of it from anywhere. You should be able to buy what you're looking for for less than $400 if you don't have to order the chassis.

Consider the Geode

I would consider an AMD Geode chip. It likely faster than you need, and you can get a motherboard/cpu/heatsink combo for around $100. They usually take DDR1 memory and 1GB DDR1 is very inexpensive. Video is built in, like most proper server boards. The

Re:Consider the Geode or a Via C7

I have seen Via cpu/motherboard combos on newegg for under $50. Really cheap and low power. The motherboard for the GPC that Walmart was selling also runs about $50.

Desktop chassis is more appropriate

The one thing I will note about rackmount servers is that they are all very noisy. For home installation, a desktop chassis will nearly always fit your needs and will be much quieter and more power-efficient than a rackmount. I recently replaced my home server with about $850 in parts from newegg. If you're interested in making a quiet desktop, take a look at SilentPCReview [silentpcreview.com].

If you're set on a rackmount server, I've been very happy with Silicon Mechanics [siliconmechanics.com], but their cheapest machine is still ~$1000.

Just upgrade

NewEgg or ZipZoomFly have motherboards, CPUs, Drives, and memory. But the big question is why update? What is wrong with the current server? I am sure you could saturate that DSL line with the server you have so why upgrade? Maybe just upgrade the disk? Or maybe more memory.

Your other option is to watch Geeks.com. Every now and then they have cheap refurbished servers.

Dude,

You're getting a Dell! Srsly tho, you can get rackmount servers from them for cheaper than you can build them yourself.

Re:

Dead on. If you really need a rackmount server, dell has low prices on single units that you can NOT beat. But the question remains, if you only need one why the heck are you getting a rackmount? Taking a serious look at your logic behind this decision

surpluscomputers or geeks.com

both have slightly older rack mounted computers on the cheap. in the order of $100 - $400. I've seen a dual xeon with 4 drives for like $250.

Does it have to be 1U?

I am just wondering if it has to be 1U. You can get a nice 4U server complete for $350. It is close to your specs already. Just upgrade RAM, and add a second hard drive, possibly upgrade processor (it has an Intel 775 socket motherboard with 1066FSB Core 2 Duo processor support). So $30 for extra RAM, $60 for disk, and possibly $200 for new CPU, you are still just in the $500-600 range, which isn't bad at all. http://www.superlogics.com/rackmount-computer/rackmount-computers/SL-4U-CL-M900-HA/316-2541.htm [superlogics.com]

System76

www.system76.com [system76.com] if you're into Ubuntu...

Where to buy a server

My friends, their friends, and their friends (like, people I've never heard of), always end up coming to me for this same advice.

    Sometimes I give/sell them parts out of my garage, because their old equipment also somehow ends up in my garage. :)

    I tend to like SuperMicro equipment, so if you have a few bucks to spend, go find yourself a nice SuperMicro 1u. But since this is your personal machine, and you don't have a huge budget, you'll have to shop like I do.

    Check out the VisionMan machines on tigerdirect.com. For about $550, you can get a 2Ghz dual core with 1Gb RAM, 2 160Gb SATA drives

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/search.asp?page=2&mnf=1286&sort=Price%20asc [tigerdirect.com]

    I haven't bought any yet, but if I ever run out of parts in my garage for new servers, I'll probably buy one. :)

    You can always go browsing on eBay. Sometimes you'll find a good deal, but generally you're not going to get much decent for under $500. There are resellers on there all the time, who grab up anything cheap (or bid them up to over $500), that they're going to sell to their customers. If you do, be cautious of home built machines. They're the best thing in the world if they're done right, but if they weren't, you can experience lots of nasty problems. Like, if there isn't enough air flow, the CPU can overheat, and in a week or two you may end up looking for a new machine again.

    I was building my own 1u machines for quite a while. When we approached 1Ghz, I had to start doing some special cooling. After that, since the company was making good money, it was cost effective to get the SuperMicro machines.

    The final option is... I needed an incoming mail server to filter viruses and spam. This was a rather urgent matter, and I didn't really have time to go through my garage piecing a machine together and test it. I also didn't have time to order anything. I went down to CompUSA (they re-opened close to my house), and picked up an eMachines AMD64 with 1Gb ram for $250. It's a tower case, but if I felt ambitious (which I didn't that night), I could have easily rebuilt it into a spare 2u case. The memory was not seated well when I unboxed it, but that's the only problem that it's had so far, and it's been running hard for a few weeks.

Check out Epic Systems

They specialize in like new lease returned hardware, including Big Iron. I got an HP Proliant from them for a song last year. www.escorp.com

Quiet low power 1U

I have build a couple of these for colos, but they are low cost, quiet, and low power, so you might be interested.

Start with a Supermicro 1U 510. This is 11" deep with an 80+ efficiency 200W power supply. It will house most uATX motherboards, although you will have to nibble out the back panel to get non supermicro boards to fit.

Then add a low cost AMD socket-AM2 motherboard.

Put a low power 45W dual core like a BE-2400 or one of the newer series. You will need a 1U blower for this.

Put one 3.5" drive (or up to 4 2.5" drives).

With a Gigabyte board and 1 2.5" HDD + 1 2.5" SSD, my system draws 37 watts in use as measured from the power line. It is not 100% quiet, but is the quietest of any 1U I have worked with.

Hey! Me too! Help me pick a CPU

I'm replacing a dying server, and for various reasons I'm getting a Dell [dell.com], probably the PowerEdge 840. My questions:

• AMD or Intel? It seems like the ball's back in Intel's court these days, but I don't track hardware news so closely anymore.
• Pentium E2180 @2.0GHz (free), Core 2 Duo @2.2GHz ($50), or dual core Xeon at 1.86GHz ($100)? Cycles aren't everything, but I'm guessing that the Core 2 Duo at 18% higher clock speed ought to be the sweet spot.
• For RAM: 1GBx2 or 512MBx4? In some systems, more sticks == more interleaving == faster. In others, more sticks == more latency. What's the current thinking?
• Why doesn't Slashdot display bulleted lists correctly anymore?

To those who would tell me (and this story's poster) to Google it: I'd rather get today's recommendations from an interactive forum than try to find a website with the same information from the last year or so. Besides, what geek doesn't want to talk about hardware?

Why?

1 processor, dual drives, and 1G RAM is about all I need

Perhaps I am confused. Why exactly do you want a rack-mounted server for this? Why not just use an old PC, most people have scads of these things sitting around. Better yet, use something like the VIA NAS 7800 [via.com.tw] and throw it in a nice small quiet case. Compared to some crappy old 1U server, you'll save hundreds of dollars a year in electricity costs alone if the thing is on 24x7.

Rack mount is dying

Are you #()*& insane? Why would you want a rack mount anything, especially in your home? Rack stuff, especially 1U, is noisy (it has to have small fans that spin really fast) and it's an inconvenient form factor unless you really need to pack a lot of equipment into a space. The rack alone takes up 21"x42"xheight, so unless you actually need something on the order of 336 CPU cores (42U of two-way quad cores), rack mount is a horrible idea. Ditch the rack and buy yourself a Shuttle barebones P238 (no, I don't work for them, but I do have shelves, not racks, full of them and they work great). Put 8G of memory, a few Raptor HDs, and a quad core in it and the whole thing will be less than $2500 from NewEgg for a sweet system. Then, put it any where you please because it's dead quiet and always ice cold (we do weather modeling on them, so we run the CPUs at 100% for days at a time).

Use a hosting company...

Seriously.

I used to have a dual CPU P3 1U rackmount server I used for those sort of things. A day of running it through a Kill-A-Watt showed me it was costing almost $40 a month in electricity.

That buys a LOT of hosting when you look at places like dreamhost, etc.

Why use 1U? Use a Mac mini

Seriously, I had the exact same concerns recently, however I refuse to listen to the insane noise usually coming from an 1U rack..

I bought a cheap mac mini (intel core solo) on ebay, gutted it, replaced the CPU, added 2 GB RAM and a 250 GB drive.. I then put an external 250 GB drive on top of it. Alternatively buy a brand new Mac mini with the specs you need.

There you go - $600 or so and you have a totally silent "home server".

weird stuff warehouse

I got a small 1U 150w celeron system for less than $50, but you have to go in to find that kind of stuff.

They have nice current systems too.

http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=10174 [weirdstuff.com]

highly recommended

Want a cheap refurb with serious geek cred?

Consider Anysystem.com [anysystem.com], where you can get dirt-cheap Sun gear. Check out the Ugly Duckling specials for working systems with cosmetic damage dirt cheap. They sell IBM server stuff, too, but that's pretty much all marked "call for pricing".

Rack shelves are the solution

First, if you're looking for inexpensive rack-mounted servers, check geeks.com which sells several machines of recent vintage.

However, you might consider this idea. I decided to be more flexible for my own home after observing a small dotcom that acquired several smaller dotcoms, some of which used towers and others that used rack mounted machines.

I opted to install a two-post rack, the kind some people call "relay racks," and I installed shelves on them. The shelves allow me to install whatever computer I want, whether rack-mounted or tower configuration. They also allow me to use non-rack-mount communications gear like routers and modems. I also have punch-down blocks at the top for cabling and power hanging off the side. Naturally your four-post 19-inch rack would have similar if not somewhat less expensive shelving available for it.

Back to my setup, the all-aluminum two-post rack came from American Power Conversion and only cost me $150.
The shelves vary from $35 to $70 each. The shelves holding the smaller gear are cantilevered and vented. The rest are center-mounted.

For your rack you can use your old rack-mounted computer as a shelf for the other components.

There shouldn't be a reason to restrict your options to just rack-mounted computers. The more flexible and less expensive tower form factors are definitely going to satisfy you more.

Re:

I am just in the process of evaluating a new server to replace my home rack-mount.

As the previous poster mentioned, if you don't need a lot of power, the D-Link DNS323 [dns323.info] with two SATA drives might fit the bill. I just got one and put in two 500GB drives. So

Re:Are your needs that great

I've been running whitebox servers like that at home for years but recently decided, like the original poster, that I wanted to go with a rackmount setup. If you're deadset on building a custom system, then I can't offer much advise. Me, I picked up a couple of these. [geeks.com]

Even after paying shipping and picking up a could of larger hard drives, I don't think I could have build a similar system any cheaper. One is my mail/web server and the other is an internal domain controller and file server.

They don't come with rails, so they're sitting on shelves in my rack rather than actually installed but I can live with that.

Re:When did Ask Slashdot become a Google Replaceme

Dude, you must be new here. 90+% of Ask Slashdot questions can be answered in some form by Google, people ask questions here to get a particular informed answer to the question from a group of fellow geeks.

Re:

I mean seriously, a few minutes of quality time spent with Google shows many, many low cost server options.

And almost all of them are worthless unless you already know exactly what you want. Hardware changes so fast that sometimes it's hard to know what the good gear is this month.